RSnaa^llii'; sirs! ■ ill's 
 
 WKBttttEBBBBufiBitt 
 
 k m<M 
 

 DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/manmadeworldorouOOgilm 
 
THE 
 
 Man-Made World 
 
 or. 
 OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE 
 
 BY 
 CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN 
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 
 CHARLTON COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
 1914 
 
Copyright 1911 
 
 by 
 
 CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN 
 

 This book is dedicated with reverent 
 love and gratitude 
 
 to 
 
 Lester F. Ward 
 
 Sociologist and Humanitarian, one of the 
 world's great men; a creative thinker to 
 whose wide knowledge and power of vision 
 we are indebted for a new grasp of the na- 
 ture and processes of Society, and to whom 
 all women are especially bound in honor and 
 gratitude for his Gynaecocentric Theory of 
 Life, than which nothing so important to 
 humanity has been advanced since the 
 Theory of Evolution, and nothing so im- 
 portant to women has ever been given to the 
 world. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Those who wish to study the underlying 
 facts on which this book is based are referred 
 to "Pure Sociology," by Lester F. Ward, 
 chapter XIV, in which the Androcentric 
 Theory of Life is fairly defined and con- 
 trasted with the Gynaecocentric Theory. 
 
 That this last is disputed by the majority 
 of present day biologists will not surprise 
 anyone who reads it and who is familiar 
 with the nature of the human mind. All 
 new scientific discoveries are slow of uni- 
 versal acceptance; and anything so sub- 
 versive of historic custom as this, involving 
 so complete a change of attitude regarding 
 the relations of the sexes to one another and 
 to Society, cannot be expected to make 
 rapid progress in popular belief. Time, 
 study and experience may be trusted to 
 establish the truth. 
 
 Assuming the Gynaecocentric Theory to 
 be the true one — that the female is the race 
 type, and the male, originally but a sex type, 
 reaching a later equality with the female, 
 and, in the human race, becoming her master 
 for a considerable historic period — this book 
 
gives a series of studies of the effect upon 
 our human development of this unprece- 
 dented dominance of the male, showing it to 
 be by no means an unmixed good. 
 
 In so utterly untrodden a field, it is more 
 than probable that errors may occur, and 
 that, in view of the colossal injustice in- 
 volved, some natural animus may occasion- 
 ally be visible; but if any man be offended 
 by such error in fact or feeling, let him ex- 
 amine the many books that have been writ- 
 ten about women. 
 
 Men have written copiously about women, 
 treating them always as females, with an 
 offensiveness and falsity patent to modern 
 minds. This book treats of men as males in 
 contradistinction to their qualities as human 
 beings, but never approaches for a moment 
 the abusiveness and contempt that has been 
 shown to women as females. 
 
 It grants to men, today, a high preemi- 
 nence over women in human development, 
 but shows this preeminence to be a distinc- 
 tion of humanity and not of sex, fully open 
 to women if they use their human powers. 
 
 When we learn to differentiate between 
 humanity and masculinity we shall give 
 honor where honor is due. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 I. As TO HUMANNESS 9 
 
 II. The Man-Made Family 26 
 
 III. Health and Beauty 44 
 
 IV. Men and Art 70 
 
 V. Masculine Literature 87 
 
 VI. Games and Sports 107 
 
 VII. Ethics and Religion 126 
 
 VIII. Education 143 
 
 IX. "Society" and "Fashion". . . 163 
 
 X. Law and Government 178 
 
 XL Crime and Punishment. . . . 193 
 
 XII. Politics and Warfare 208 
 
 XIII. Industry and Economics . . . 227 
 
 XIV. A Human World 244 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 AS TO HUMANNESS 
 
 LET us begin, inoffensively, with 
 sheep. The sheep is a beast with 
 which we are all familiar, being 
 much used in religious imagery; the com- 
 mon stock of painters; a staple article of 
 diet; one of our main sources of clothing, 
 and an everyday symbol of bashfulness and 
 stupidity. 
 
 In some grazing regions the sheep is an 
 object of terror, destroying grass, bush and 
 forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great 
 plains, sheep-keeping frequently results in 
 insanity, owing to the loneliness of the shep- 
 herd, and the monotonous appearance and 
 behavioi.. of the sheep. 
 
 By thi poet, young sheep are preferred, 
 the lamb gambolling gaily; unless it be in 
 hymns, where "all we like sheep" are repeat- 
 
10 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 edly described, and much stress is laid upon 
 the straying propensities of the animal. 
 
 To the scientific mind there is special in- 
 terest in the sequacity of sheep, their habit 
 of following one another with automatic 
 imitation. This instinct, we are told, has 
 been developed by ages of wild crowded 
 racing on narrow ledges, along precipices, 
 chasms, around sudden spurs and corners, 
 only the leader seeing when, where and how 
 to jump. If those behind jumped exactly as 
 he did, they lived. If they stopped to ex- 
 ercise independent judgment, they were 
 pushed off and perished; they and their 
 judgment with them. 
 
 All these things, and many that are simi- 
 lar, occur to us when we think of sheep. 
 They are also ewes and rams. Yes, truly; 
 but what of it? All that has been said was 
 said of sheep, genus ovis, that bland beast, 
 compound of mutton, wool, and foolishness, 
 so widely known. If we think of the sheep- 
 dog (and dog-ess), the shepherd (and shep- 
 herd-ess), of the ferocious sheep-eating bird 
 of New Zealand, the Kea (and Kea-ess), 
 all these herd, guard, or kill the sheep, both 
 
AS TO HUM AN NESS 11 
 
 rams and ewes alike. In regard to mutton, 
 to wool, to general character, we think only 
 of their sheepishness, not at all of their ram- 
 ishness or eweishness. That which is ovine 
 or bovine, canine, feline or equine, is easily 
 recognized as distinguishing that particular 
 species of animal, and has no relation what- 
 ever to the sex thereof. 
 
 Returning to our muttons, let us consider 
 the ram, and wherein his character differs 
 from the sheep. We find he has a more 
 quarrelsome disposition. He paws the earth 
 and makes a noise. He has a tendency to 
 butt. So has a goat — Mr. Goat. So has 
 Mr. Buffalo. This tendency to plunge head 
 foremost at an adversary — and to find any 
 other gentleman an adversary on sight — 
 does not pertain to sheep, to genus oris; 
 but to any male creature with horns. 
 
 As "function comes before organ," we 
 may even give a reminiscent glance down 
 the long path of evolution, and see how the 
 mere act of butting — passionately and per- 
 petually repeated — born of the belligerent 
 spirit of the male — produced horns! 
 
 The ewe, on the other hand, exhibits love 
 
12 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 and care for her little ones, gives them milk 
 and tries to guard them. But so does a goat 
 — Mrs. Goat. So does Mrs. Buffalo and 
 the rest. This mother instinct is no pecu- 
 liarity of genus ovis, but of any female 
 creature. 
 
 Even the bird, though not a mammal, 
 shows the same mother-love and mother- 
 care, while the father bird, though not a but- 
 ter, fights with beak and wing and spur. 
 His competition is more effective through 
 display. The wish to please, the need to 
 please, the overmastering necessity upon 
 him that he secure the favor of the female, 
 has made the male bird blossom like a but- 
 terfly. He blazes in gorgeous plumage, 
 rears haughty crests and combs, shows 
 drooping wattles and dangling blobs such 
 as the turkey-cock affords; long splendid 
 feathers for pure ornament appear upon 
 him; what in her is a mere tail-effect be- 
 comes in him a mass of glittering drapery. 
 
 Partridge-cock, farmyard-cock, peacock, 
 from sparrow to ostrich, observe his mien! 
 To strut and languish; to exhibit every 
 beauteaus lure; to sacrifice ease, comfort, 
 
AS TO HUMANNESS 13 
 
 speed, everything — to beauty — for her sake 
 — this is the nature of the he-bird of any 
 species ; the characteristic, not of the turkey, 
 but of the cock! With drumming of loud 
 wings, with crow and quack and bursts of 
 glorious song, he woos his mate; displays 
 his splendors before her; fights fiercely with 
 his rivals. To butt — to strut — to make a 
 noise — all for love's sake; these acts are 
 common to the male. 
 
 We may now generalize and clearly state : 
 That is masculine which belongs to the male 
 — to any or all males, irrespective of species. 
 That is feminine which belongs to the fe- 
 male, to any or all females, irrespective of 
 species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, ca- 
 nine, equine or asinine which belongs to that 
 species, irrespective of sex. 
 
 In our own species all this is changed. 
 We have been so taken up with the phe- 
 nomena of masculinity and femininity, that 
 our common humanity has largely escaped 
 notice. We know we are human, naturally, 
 and are very proud of it ; but we do not con- 
 sider in what our humanness consists; nor 
 how men and women may fall short of it, or 
 
14 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 overstep its bounds, in continual insistence 
 upon their special differences. It is "manly" 
 to do this; it is "womanly" to do that; but 
 what a human being should do under the 
 circumstances is not thought of. 
 
 The only time when we do recognize what 
 we call "common humanity" is in extreme 
 cases, matters of life and death ; when either 
 men or women are expected to behave as if 
 they were also human creatures. Since the 
 range of feeling and action proper to hu- 
 manity, as such, is far wider than that 
 proper to either sex, it seems at first some- 
 what remarkable that we have given it so 
 little recognition. 
 
 A little classification will help us here. 
 We have certain qualities in common with 
 inanimate matter, such as weight, opacity, 
 resilience. It is clear that these are not 
 human. We have other qualities in com- 
 mon with all forms of life ; cellular construc- 
 tion, for instance; the reproduction of cells 
 and the need of nutrition. These again are 
 not human. We have others, many others, 
 common to the higher mammals; which are 
 not exclusively ours — are not distinctively 
 
AS TO HUMANNESS 15 
 
 human. What then are true human charac- 
 teristics ? In what way is the human species 
 distinguished from all other species? 
 
 Our human-ness is seen most clearly in 
 three main lines: it is mechanical, psychical 
 and social. Our power to make and use 
 things is essentially human; we alone have 
 extra-physical tools. We have added to our 
 teeth the knife, sword, scissors, mowing 
 machine; to our claws the spade, harrow, 
 plough, drill, dredge. We are a protean 
 creature, using the larger brain power 
 through a wide variety of changing weapons. 
 This is one of our main and vital distinc- 
 tions. Ancient animal races are traced and 
 known by mere bones and shells, ancient 
 human races by their buildings, tools and 
 utensils. 
 
 That degree of brain development which 
 gives us the human mind is a clear distinc- 
 tion of race. The savage who can count a 
 hundred is more human that the savage who 
 can count ten. 
 
 More prominent than either of these is 
 the social nature of humanity. We are by 
 no means the only group-animal; that 
 
Hi THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 ancient type of industry the ant, and even 
 the well-worn bee, are social creatures. But 
 insects of their kind are found living alone. 
 Human beings never. Our human-ness be- 
 gins with some low form of social relation 
 and increases as that relation develops. 
 
 Human life of any sort is dependent upon 
 what Kropotkin calls "mutual aid," and hu- 
 man progress keeps step absolutely with 
 that interchange of specialized services 
 which makes society organic. The nomad, 
 living on cattle as ants live on theirs, is 
 less human than the farmer, raising food by 
 intelligently applied labor; and the exten- 
 sion of trade and commerce, from mere vil- 
 lage market-places to the world-exchanges 
 of today, is extension of human-ness as well. 
 
 Humanity, thus considered, is not a thing 
 made at once and unchangeable, but a stage 
 of development; and is still, as Wells de- 
 scribes it, "in the making." Our human- 
 ness is seen to lie not so much in what we 
 are individually, as in our relations to one 
 another; and even that individuality is but 
 the result of our relations to one another. 
 It is in what we do and how we do it, rather 
 
AS TO HUM ANN ESS 17 
 
 than in what we are. Some, philosophically 
 inclined, exalt "being" over "doing." To 
 them this question may be put: "Can you 
 mention any forms of life that merely 'is,' 
 without doing anything?" 
 
 Taken separately and physically, we are 
 animals, genus homo; taken socially and 
 psychically, we are, in varying degree, hu- 
 man ; and our real history lies in the develop- 
 ment of this human-ness. 
 
 Our historic period is not very long. Real 
 written history only goes back a few thou- 
 sand years, beginning with the stone records 
 of ancient Egypt. During this period we 
 have had almost universally what is here 
 called an Androcentric Culture. The his- 
 tory, such as it was, was made and written 
 by men. 
 
 The mental, the mechanical, the social de- 
 velopment, was almost wholly theirs. We 
 have, so far, lived and suffered and died in 
 a man-made world. So general, so un- 
 broken, has been this condition, that to men- 
 tion it arouses no more remark than the 
 statement of a natural law. We have taken 
 it for granted, since the dawn of civilization, 
 
18 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 that "mankind" meant men-kind, and the 
 world was theirs. 
 
 Women we have sharply delimited. 
 Women were a sex; "the sex," according to 
 chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for 
 special services peculiar to femininity. As 
 one English scientist put it, in 1888, 
 "Women are not only not the race — they 
 are not even half the race, but a sub-species 
 told off for reproduction only." 
 
 This mental attitude toward women is 
 even more clearly expressed by Mr. H. B. 
 Marriot- Watson in his article on "The 
 American Woman" in the "Nineteenth 
 Century" for June, 1904, where he says: 
 "Her constitutional restlessness has caused 
 her to abdicate those functions which alone 
 excuse or explain her existence." This is a 
 peculiarly happy and condensed expression 
 of the relative position of women during our 
 androcentric culture. The man was ac- 
 cepted as the race type without one dis- 
 sentient voice; and the woman — a strange, 
 diverse creature, quite disharmonious in the 
 accepted scheme of things — was excused 
 and explained only as a female. 
 
AS TO HUMANNESS 19 
 
 She has needed volumes of such excuse 
 and explanation; also, apparently, volumes 
 of abuse and condemnation. In any library 
 catalogue we may find books upon books 
 about women: physiological, sentimental, 
 didactic, religious — all manner of books 
 about women, as such. Even to-day in the 
 works of Marholm — poor young Weininger, 
 Moebius, and others, we find the same per- 
 petual discussion of women — as such. 
 
 This is a book about men — as such. It 
 differentiates between the human nature 
 and the sex nature. It will not go so far 
 as to allege man's masculine traits to be all 
 that excuse or explain his existence; but 
 it will point out what are masculine traits as 
 distinct from human ones, and what has 
 been the effect on our human life of the un- 
 bridled dominance of one sex. 
 
 We can see at once, glaringly, what would 
 have been the result of giving all human 
 affairs into female hands. Such an extraor- 
 dinary and deplorable situation would have 
 "feminized" the world. We should have all 
 become "effeminate." 
 
 See how in our use of language the case 
 
20 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 is clearly shown. The adjectives and de- 
 rivatives based on woman's distinctions are 
 alien and derogatory when applied to hu- 
 man affairs; "effeminate" — too female, con- 
 notes contempt, but has no masculine 
 analogue; whereas "emasculate" — not 
 enough male, is a term of reproach, and has 
 no feminine analogue. "Virile" — manly, we 
 oppose to "puerile" — childish, and the very 
 word "virtue" is derived from "vir" — a man. 
 
 Even in the naming of other animals we 
 have taken the male as the race type, and 
 put on a special termination to indicate "his 
 female," as in lion, lioness; leopard, leop- 
 ardess ; while all our human scheme of things 
 rests on the same tacit assumption; man be- 
 ing held the human type; woman a sort of 
 accompaniment and subordinate assistant, 
 merely essential to the making of people. 
 
 She has held always the place of a prepo- 
 sition in relation to man. She has been con- 
 sidered above him or below him, before him, 
 behind him, beside him, a wholly relative ex- 
 istence — "Sydney's sister," "Pembroke's 
 mother" — but never by any chance Sydney 
 or Pembroke herself. 
 
AS TO HUMANNESS 21 
 
 Acting on this assumption, all human 
 standards have been based on male char- 
 acteristics, and when we wish to praise the 
 work of a woman, we say she has "a mascu- 
 line mind." 
 
 It is no easy matter to deny or reverse a 
 universal assumption. The human mind 
 has had a good many jolts since it began 
 to think, but after each upheaval it settles 
 down as peacefully as the vine-growers on 
 Vesuvius, accepting the last lava crust as 
 permanent ground. 
 
 What we see immediately around us, 
 what we are born into and grow up with, 
 be it mental furniture or physical, we as- 
 sume to be the order of nature. 
 
 If a given idea has been held in the human 
 mind for many generations, as almost all 
 our common ideas have, it takes sincere and 
 continued effort to remove it; and if it is 
 one of the oldest we have in stock, one of 
 the big, common, unquestioned world ideas, 
 vast is the labor of those who seek to 
 change it. 
 
 Nevertheless, if the matter is one of im- 
 portance, if the previous idea was a palpable 
 
22 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 error, of large and evil effeet, and if the 
 new one is true and widely important, the 
 effort is worth making. 
 
 The task here undertaken is of this sort. 
 It seeks to show that what we have all this 
 time called "human nature" and deprecated, 
 was in great part only male nature, and 
 good enough in its place ; that what we have 
 called "masculine" and admired as such, was 
 in large part human, and should be applied 
 to both sexes; that what we have called 
 "feminine" and condemned, was also largely 
 human and applicable to both. Our andro- 
 centric culture is so shown to have been, 
 and still to be, a masculine culture in excess, 
 and therefore undesirable. 
 
 In the preliminary work of approaching 
 these facts it will be well to explain how it 
 can be that so wide and serious an error 
 should have been made by practically all 
 men. The reason is simply that they were 
 men. They were males, and saw women as 
 females — and not otherwise. 
 
 So absolute is this conviction that the man 
 who reads will say, "Of course! How else 
 are we to look at women except as fe- 
 
AS TO HUMANNESS 23 
 
 males? They are females, aren't they?" 
 Yes, they are, as men are males unquestion- 
 ably ; but there is possible the frame of mind 
 of the old marquise who was asked by an 
 English friend how she could bear to have 
 the footman serve her breakfast in bed — to 
 have a man in her bed-chamber — and re- 
 plied sincerely, "Call you that thing there 
 a man?" 
 
 The world is full of men, but their prin- 
 cipal occupation is human work of some 
 sort ; and women see in them the human dis- 
 tinction preponderantly. Occasionally some 
 unhappy lady marries her coachman — long 
 contemplation of broad shoulders having an 
 effect, apparently ; but in general women see 
 the human creature most; the male creature 
 only when they love. 
 
 To the man, the whole world was his 
 world; his because he was male; and the 
 whole world of woman was the home; be- 
 cause she was female. She had her pre- 
 scribed sphere, strictly limited to her femi- 
 nine occupations and interests; he had all 
 the rest of life; and not only so, but, having 
 it, insisted on calling it male. 
 
24 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 This accounts for the general attitude of 
 men toward the now rapid humanization of 
 women. From her first faint struggles to- 
 ward freedom and justice, to her present 
 valiant efforts toward full economic and po- 
 litical equality, each step has been termed 
 "unfeminine," and resented as an intrusion 
 upon man's place and power. Here shows 
 the need of our new classification, of the 
 three distinct fields of life — masculine, femi- 
 nine and human. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there is a "woman's 
 sphere," sharply defined and quite different 
 from his; there is also a "man's sphere," as 
 sharply defined and even more limited; but 
 there remains a common sphere — that of 
 humanity, which belongs to both alike. 
 
 In the earlier part of what is known as 
 "the woman's movement," it was sharply 
 opposed on the ground that women would 
 become "unsexed." Let us note in pass- 
 ing that they have become unsexed in one 
 particular, most glaringly so, and that no 
 one has noticed or objected to it. 
 
 As part of our androcentric culture, we 
 may point to the peculiar reversal of sex 
 
AS TO HUM AN NESS 25 
 
 characteristics which makes the human fe- 
 male carry the burden of ornament. She 
 alone, of all human creatures, has adopted 
 the essentially masculine attribute of special 
 sex-decoration; she does not fight for her 
 mate, as yet, but she blooms forth as the 
 peacock and bird of paradise, in poignant 
 reversal of nature's laws, even wearing mas- 
 culine feathers to further her feminine ends. 
 
 Woman's natural work as a female is 
 that of the mother; man's natural work as 
 a male is that of the father; their mutual 
 relation to this end being a source of joy 
 and well-being when rightly held: but hu- 
 man work covers all our life outside of these 
 specialities. Every handicraft, every pro- 
 fession, every science, every art, all normal 
 amusements and recreations, all govern- 
 ment, education, religion; the whole living 
 world of human achievement: all this is 
 human. 
 
 That one sex should have monopolized all 
 human activities, called them "man's work," 
 and managed them as such, is what is meant 
 by the phrase "Androcentric Culture." 
 
26 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 
 
 THE family is older than humanity, 
 and therefore cannot be called a 
 human institution. A postoffice, 
 now, is wholly human ; no other creature has 
 a postoffice, but there are families in plenty 
 among birds and beasts; all kinds perma- 
 nent and transient; monogamous, poly- 
 gamous and polyandrous. 
 
 We are now to consider the growth of the 
 family in humanity; what is its rational de- 
 velopment in humanness; in mechanical, 
 mental and social lines; in the extension of 
 love and service; and the effect upon it of 
 this strange new arrangement — a masculine 
 proprietor. 
 
 Like all natural institutions the family 
 has a purpose; and is to be measured pri- 
 marily as it serves that purpose; which is, 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 27 
 
 the care and nurture of the young. To pro- 
 tect the helpless little ones, to feed and shel- 
 ter them, to ensure them the benefits of an 
 ever longer period of immaturity, and so to 
 improve the race — this is the original pur- 
 pose of the family. 
 
 When a natural institution becomes hu- 
 man it enters the plane of consciousness. 
 We think about it; and, in our strange new 
 power of voluntary action, do things to it. 
 We have done strange tilings to the family; 
 or, more specifically, men have. 
 
 Balsac, at his bitterest, observed, 
 "Woman's virtue is man's best invention." 
 Balsac was wrong. Virtue — the unswerving 
 devotion to one mate — is common among 
 birds and some of the higher mammals. If 
 Balsac meant celibacy when he said virtue, 
 why that is one of man's inventions — though 
 hardly his best. 
 
 What man has done to the family, speak- 
 ing broadly, is to change it from an institu- 
 tion for the best service of the child to one 
 modified to his own service, the vehicle of 
 his comfort, power and pride. 
 
 Among the heavy millions of the unstirred 
 
28 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 East, a child — necessarily a male child — is 
 desired for the credit and glory of the father, 
 and his fathers; in place of seeing that all 
 a parent is for is the best service of the child. 
 Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all 
 natural law, is of wholly androcentric origin. 
 It is strongest among old patriarchal races; 
 lingers on in feudal Europe; is to be traced 
 even in America to-day in a few sporadic 
 efforts to magnify the deeds of our an- 
 cestors. 
 
 The best thing any of us can do for our 
 ancestors is to be better than they were ; and 
 we ought to give our minds to it. When we 
 use our past merely as a guide-book, and 
 concentrate our noble emotions on the pres- 
 ent and future, we shall improve more 
 rapidly. 
 
 The peculiar changes brought about in 
 family life by the predominance of the male 
 are easily traced. In these studies we must 
 keep clearly in mind the basic masculine 
 characteristics: desire, combat, self-expres- 
 sion; all legitimate and right in proper use, 
 only mischievous when excessive or out of 
 place. Through them the male is led to 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 29 
 
 strenuous competition for the favor of the 
 female; in the overflowing ardour of song, 
 as in nightingale and tom-cat; in wasteful 
 splendor of personal decoration, from the 
 pheasant's breast to an embroidered waist- 
 coat; and in direct struggle for the prize, 
 from the stag's locked horns to the clashing 
 spears of the tournament. 
 
 It is earnestly hoped that no reader will 
 take offence at the necessarily frequent ref- 
 erence to these essential features of male- 
 ness. In the many books about women it is, 
 naturally, their femaleness that has been 
 studied and enlarged upon. And though 
 women, after thousands of years of such 
 discussion, have become a little restive under 
 the constant use of the word female: men, 
 as rational beings, should not object to an 
 analogous study — at least not for some time 
 — a few centuries or so. 
 
 How, then, do we find these masculine 
 tendencies, desire, combat and self-expres- 
 sion, affect the home and family when given 
 too much power? 
 
 First comes the effect in the preliminary 
 work of selection. One of the most uplift- 
 
30 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 ing forces of nature is that of sex selection. 
 The males, numerous, varied, pouring a 
 flood of energy into wide modifications, 
 compete for the female, and she selects the 
 victor ; thus securing to the race the new im- 
 provements. 
 
 In forming the proprietary family there 
 is no such competition, no such selection. 
 The man, by violence or by purchase, does 
 the choosing — he selects the kind of woman 
 that pleases him. Nature did not intend him 
 to select; he is not good at it. Neither was 
 the female intended to compete — she is not 
 good at it. 
 
 If there is a race between males for a mate 
 — the swiftest gets her first ; but if one male 
 is chasing a number of females he gets the 
 slowest first. The one method improves our 
 speed : the other does not. If males struggle 
 and fight with one another for a mate, the 
 strongest secures her; if the male struggles 
 and fights with the female (a peculiar and 
 unnatural horror, known only among hu- 
 man beings), he most readily secures the 
 weakest. The one method improves our 
 strength — the other does not. 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 31 
 
 When women became the property of 
 men; sold and bartered; "given away" by 
 their paternal owner to their marital owner ; 
 they lost this prerogative of the female, this 
 primal duty of selection. The males were 
 no longer improved by their natural com- 
 petition for the female ; and the females were 
 not improved; because the male did not se- 
 lect for points of racial superiority, but for 
 such qualities as pleased him. 
 
 There is a locality in northern Africa, 
 where young girls are deliberately fed with 
 a certain oily seed, to make them fat, — that 
 they may be the more readily married, — as 
 the men like fat wives. Among certain more 
 savage African tribes the chief's wives are 
 prepared for him by being kept in small 
 dark huts and fed on "mealies" and mo- 
 lasses; precisely as a Strasbourg goose is 
 fattened for the gourmand. Now fatness is 
 not a desirable race characteristic; it does 
 not add to the woman's happiness of effi- 
 ciency; or to the child's; it is merely an ac- 
 cessory pleasant to the master; his attitude 
 being much as the amorous monad ecstati- 
 
32 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 cally puts it, in Sill's quaint poem, "Five 
 Lives," 
 
 "O the little female monad's lips ! 
 O the little female monad's eyes ! 
 O the little, little, female, female monad !" 
 
 This ultra littleness and ultra femaleness 
 has been demanded and produced by our 
 Androcentric Culture. 
 
 Following this, and part of it, comes the 
 effect on motherhood. This function was 
 the original and legitimate base of family 
 life; and its ample sustaining power 
 throughout the long early period of "the 
 mother-right;" or as we call it, the matri- 
 archate ; the father being her assistant in the 
 great work. The patriarchate, with its pro- 
 prietary family, changed this altogether ; the 
 woman, as the property of the man, was con- 
 sidered first and foremost as a means of 
 pleasure to him; and while she was still 
 valued as a mother, it was in a tributary ca- 
 pacity. Her children were now his; his 
 property, as she was; the whole enginery of 
 the family was turned from its true use to 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 33 
 
 this new one, hitherto unknown, the service 
 of the adult male. 
 
 To this day we are living under the in- 
 fluence of the proprietary family. The duty 
 of the wife is held to involve man-service as 
 well as child-service; and indeed far more; 
 as the duty of the wife to the husband quite 
 transcends the duty of the mother to the 
 child. 
 
 See for instance the English wife staying 
 with her husband in India and sending the 
 children home to be brought up; because 
 India is bad for children See our common 
 law that the man decides the place of resi- 
 dence; if the wife refuses to go with him to 
 howsoever unfit a place for her and for the 
 little ones, such refusal on her part consti- 
 tutes "desertion" and is ground for divorce. 
 
 See again the idea that the wife must re- 
 main with the husband though a drunkard, 
 or diseased; regardless of the sin against the 
 child involved in such a relation. Public 
 feeling on these matters is indeed changing; 
 but as a whole the ideals of the man-made 
 family still obtain. 
 
 The effect of this on the woman has been 
 
34 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 inevitably to weaken and over-shadow her 
 sense of the real purpose of the family; of 
 the relentless responsibilities of her duty as 
 a mother. She is first taught duty to her 
 parents, with heavy religious sanction; and 
 then duty to her husband, similarly but- 
 tressed ; but her duty to her children has been 
 left to instinct. She is not taught in girl- 
 hood as to her preeminent power and duty 
 as a mother; her young ideals are all of de- 
 votion to the lover and husband, with only 
 the vaguest sense of results. 
 
 The young girl is reared in what we call 
 ''innocence"; poetically described as 
 "bloom"; and this condition is held to be 
 one of her chief "charms." The requisite 
 is wholly androcentric. This "innocence" 
 does not enable her to choose a husband 
 wisely; she does not even know the dangers 
 that possibly confront her. We vaguely 
 imagine that her father or brother, who do 
 know, will protect her. Unfortunately the 
 father and brother, under our current 
 "double standard" of morality, do not judge 
 the applicants as she would if she knew the 
 nature of their offenses. 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 35 
 
 Furthermore, if her heart is set on one of 
 them, no amount of general advice and op- 
 position serves to prevent her marrying him. 
 "I love him!" she says, sublimely. "I do not 
 care what he has done. I will forgive liim. 
 I will save him!" 
 
 This state of mind serves to forward the 
 interests of the lover, but is of no advantage 
 to the children. We have magnified the 
 duties of the wife, and minified the duties 
 of the mother; and this is inevitable in a 
 family relation every law and custom of 
 which is arranged from the masculine view- 
 point. 
 
 From this same viewpoint, equally essen- 
 tial to the proprietary family, comes the re- 
 quirement that the woman shall serve the 
 man. Her service is not that of the associate 
 and equal, as when she joins him in his busi- 
 ness. It is not that of a beneficial combina- 
 tion, as when she practices another business 
 and they share the profits ; it is not even that 
 of the specialist, as the service of a tailor or 
 barber ; it is personal service — the work of a 
 servant. 
 
 In large generalization, the women of the 
 
36 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 world cook and wash, sweep and dust, sew 
 and mend, for the men. 
 
 We are so accustomed to this relation; 
 have held it for so long to be the "natural" 
 relation, that it is difficult indeed to show 
 it to be distinctly unnatural and injurious. 
 The father expects to be served by the 
 daughter, a service quite different from what 
 he expects of the son. This shows at once 
 that such service is no integral part of 
 motherhood, or even of marriage ; but is sup- 
 posed to be the proper industrial position of 
 women, as such. 
 
 Why is this so? Why, on the face of it, 
 given a daughter and a son, should a form of 
 service be expected of the one, which would 
 be considered ignominious by the other? 
 
 The underlying reason is this. Industry, 
 at its base, is a feminine function. The sur- 
 plus energy of the mother does not manifest 
 itself in noise, or combat, or display, but in 
 productive industry. Because of her 
 mother-power she became the first inventor 
 and laborer; being in truth the mother of all 
 industry as well as all people. 
 
 Man's entrance upon industry is late and 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 37 
 
 reluctant; as will be shown later in treating 
 his effect on economics. In this field of fam- 
 ily life, his effect was as follows : 
 
 Establishing the proprietary family at an 
 age when the industry was primitive and 
 domestic; and thereafter confining the 
 woman solely to the domestic area, he 
 thereby confined her to primitive industry. 
 The domestic industries, in the hands of 
 women, constitute a survival of our remotest 
 past. Such work was "woman's work" as 
 was all the work then known; such work is 
 still considered woman's work because they 
 have been prevented from doing any other. 
 
 The term "domestic industry" does not 
 define a certain kind of labor, but a certain 
 grade of labor. Architecture was a domestic 
 industry once — when every savage mother 
 set up her own tepee. To be confined to 
 domestic industry is no proper distinction 
 of womanhood; it is an historic distinction, 
 an economic distinction, it sets a date and 
 limit to woman's industrial progress. 
 
 In this respect the man-made family has 
 resulted in arresting the development of half 
 the world. We have a world wherein men, 
 
38 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 industrially, live in the twentieth century; 
 and women, industrially, live in the first — 
 and back of it. 
 
 To the same source we trace the social 
 and educational limitations set about women. 
 The dominant male, holding his women as 
 property, and fiercely jealous of them, con- 
 sidering them always as his, not belonging 
 to themselves, their children, or the world; 
 has hedged them in with restrictions of a 
 thousand sorts; physical, as in the crippled 
 Chinese lady or the imprisoned odalisque; 
 moral, as in the oppressive doctrines of sub- 
 mission taught by all our androcentric re- 
 ligions ; mental, as in the enforced ignorance 
 from which women are now so swiftly 
 emerging. 
 
 This abnormal restriction of women has 
 necessarily injured motherhood. The man, 
 free, growing in the world's growth, has 
 mounted with the centuries, filling an ever 
 wider range of world activities. The 
 woman, bound, has not so grown; and the 
 child is born to a progressive fatherhood and 
 a stationary motherhood. Thus the man- 
 made family reacts unfavorably upon the 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 39 
 
 child. We rob our children of half their 
 social heredity by keeping the mother in 
 an inferior position; however legalized, hal- 
 lowed, or ossified by time, the position of 
 domestic servant is inferior. 
 
 It is for this reason that child culture is 
 at so low a level, and for the most part ut- 
 terly unknown. To-day, when the forces of 
 education are steadily working nearer to the 
 cradle, a new sense is wakening of the im- 
 portance of the period of infancy, and its 
 wiser treatment ; yet those who know of such 
 a movement are few, and of them some are 
 content to earn easy praise — and pay — by 
 belittling right progress to gratify the preju- 
 dices of the ignorant. 
 
 The whole position is simple and clear; 
 and easily traceable to its root. Given a 
 proprietary family, where the man holds 
 the woman primarily for his satisfaction and 
 service — then necessarily he shuts her up 
 and keeps her for these purposes. Being so 
 kept, she cannot develop humanly, as he has, 
 through social contact, social service, true 
 social life. (We may note in passing, her 
 passionate fondness for the child-game 
 
40 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 called "society" she has been allowed to en- 
 tertain herself withal; that poor simiacrum 
 of real social life, in which people decorate 
 themselves and madly crowd together, chat- 
 tering, for what is called "entertainment.") 
 Thus checked in social development, we have 
 but a low grade motherhood to offer our 
 children; and the children, reared in the 
 primitive conditions thus artificially main- 
 tained, enter life with a false perspective, 
 not only toward men and women, but toward 
 life as a whole. 
 
 The child should receive in the family, full 
 preparation for his relation to the world at 
 large. His whole life must be spent in the 
 world, serving it well or ill ; and youth is the 
 time to learn how. But the androcentric 
 home cannot teach him. We live to-day in 
 a democracy — the man-made family is a 
 despotism. It may be a weak one; the 
 despot may be dethroned and overmastered 
 by his little harem of one; but in that case 
 she becomes the despot — that is all. The 
 male is esteemed "the head of the family"; 
 it belongs to him; he maintains it; and the 
 rest of the world is a wide hunting ground 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 41 
 
 and battlefield wherein he competes with 
 other males as of old. 
 
 The girl-child, peering out, sees this for- 
 bidden field as belonging wholly to men- 
 kind; and her relation to it is to secure one 
 for herself — not only that she may love, but 
 that she may live. He will feed, clothe and 
 adorn her — she will serve him ; from the sub- 
 jection of the daughter to that of the wife 
 she steps; from one home to the other, and 
 never enters the world at all — man's world. 
 
 The boy, on the other hand, considers the 
 home as a place of women, an inferior place, 
 and longs to grow up and leave it — for the 
 real world. He is quite right. The error 
 is that this great social instinct, calling for 
 full social exercise, exchange, service, is con- 
 sidered masculine, whereas it is human, and 
 belongs to boy and girl alike. 
 
 The child is affected first through the re- 
 tarded development of his mother, then 
 through the arrested conditions of home in- 
 dustry; and further through the wrong 
 ideals which have arisen from these condi- 
 tions. A normal home, where there was hu- 
 
42 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 man equality between mother and father, 
 would have a better influence. 
 
 We must not overlook the effect of the 
 proprietary family on the proprietor him- 
 self. 
 
 He, too, has been held back somewhat 
 by this reactionary force. In the process of 
 becoming human we must learn to recognize 
 justice, freedom, human rights; we must 
 learn self-control and to think of others; 
 have minds that grow and broaden ration- 
 ally; we must learn the broad mutual inter- 
 service and unbounded joy of social inter- 
 course and service. The pretty despot of 
 the man-made home is hindered in his hu- 
 manness by too much manness. 
 
 For each man to have one whole woman 
 to cook for and wait upon him is a poor 
 education for democracy. The boy with a 
 servile mother, the man with a servile wife, 
 cannot reach the sense of equal rights we 
 need to-day. Too constant consideration of 
 the master's tastes makes the master selfish; 
 and the assault upon his heart direct, or 
 through that proverbial side-avenue, the 
 stomach, which the dependent woman needs 
 
THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 43 
 
 must make when she wants anything, is bad 
 for the man, as well as for her. 
 
 We are slowly forming a nobler type of 
 family; the union of two, based on love and 
 recognized by law, maintained because of its 
 happiness and use. We are even now ap- 
 proaching a tenderness and permanence of 
 love, high pure enduring love; combined 
 with the broad deep-rooted friendliness and 
 comradeship of equals; which promises us 
 more happiness in marriage than we have 
 yet known. It will be good for all the par- 
 ties concerned — man, woman and child; and 
 promote our general social progress ad- 
 mirably. 
 
 If it needs "a head" it will elect a chair- 
 man pro tern. Friendship does not need 
 "a head." Love does not need "a head." 
 Why should a family? 
 
44 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HEALTH AND BEAUTY 
 
 AMONG the many paradoxes which 
 we find in human life is our low 
 average standard of health and 
 beauty, compared with our power and 
 knowledge. All creatures suffer from con- 
 flict with the elements; from enemies with- 
 out and within — the prowling devourers of 
 the forest, and "the terror that walketh in 
 darkness" and attacks the body from inside, 
 in hidden millions. 
 
 Among wild animals generally, there is a 
 certain standard of excellence; if you shoot 
 a bear or a bird it is a fair sample of the 
 species; you do not say, "O what an ugly 
 one!" or "This must have been an invalid!" 
 Where we have domesticated any animal, 
 and interfered with its natural habits, illness 
 has followed; the dog is said to have the most 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 45 
 
 diseases second to man; the horse comes 
 next; but the wild ones put us to shame by 
 their superior health and the beauty that be- 
 longs to right development. 
 
 In our long ages of blind infancy we as- 
 sume that sickness was a visitation from the 
 gods; some still believe this, holding it to 
 be a special perogative of divinity to afflict 
 us in this way. We speak of "the ills that 
 flesh is heir to" as if the inheritance was en- 
 tailed and inalienable. Only of late years, 
 after much study and long struggle with this 
 old belief which made us submit to sickness 
 as a blow from the hand of God, we are be- 
 ginning to learn something of the many 
 causes of our many diseases, and how to 
 remove some of them. 
 
 It is still true, however, that almost every 
 one of us is to some degree abnormal; the 
 features asymmetrical, the vision defective, 
 the digestion unreliable, the nervous system 
 erratic — we are but a job lot even in what 
 we call "good health"; and are subject to 
 a burden of pain and premature death that 
 would make life hideous if it were not so 
 ridiculously unnecessary. 
 
46 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 As to beauty — we do not think of ex- 
 pecting it save in the rarely exceptional case. 
 Look at the faces — the figures — in any 
 crowd you meet; compare the average man 
 or the average woman with the normal type 
 of human beauty as given us in picture and 
 statue; and consider if there is not some 
 general cause for so general a condition of 
 ugliness. 
 
 Moreover, leaving our defective bodies 
 concealed by garments; what are those gar- 
 ments, as conducive to health and beauty? 
 Is the practical ugliness of our men's attire, 
 and the impractical absurdity of our wo- 
 men's, any contribution to human beauty? 
 Look at our houses — are they beautiful? 
 Even the houses of the rich? 
 
 We do not even know that we ought to 
 live in a world of overflowing loveliness ; and 
 that our contribution to it should be the 
 loveliest of all. We are so sodden in the dull 
 ugliness of our interiors, so used to calling 
 a tame weary low-toned color scheme "good 
 taste," that only children dare frankly yearn 
 for Beauty — and they are speedily educated 
 out of it. 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 47 
 
 The reasons specially given for our low 
 standards of health and beauty are ignor- 
 ance, poverty, and the evil effects of special 
 trades. The Man with the Hoe becomes 
 brother to the ox because of over-much hoe- 
 ing; the housepainter is lead-poisoned be- 
 cause of his painting; books have been writ- 
 ten to show the injurious influence of nearly 
 all our industries upon workers. 
 
 These causes are sound as far as they go ; 
 but do not cover the whole ground. 
 
 The farmer may be muscle-bound and 
 stooping from his labor; but that does not 
 account for his dyspepsia or his rheumatism. 
 
 Then we allege poverty as covering all. 
 Poverty does cover a good deal. But when 
 we find even a half-fed savage better devel- 
 oped than a well paid cashier; and a poor 
 peasant woman a more vigorous mother than 
 the idle wife of a rich man, poverty is not 
 enough. 
 
 Then we say ignorance explains it. But 
 there are most learned professors who are 
 ugly and asthmathic; there are even doctors 
 who can boast no beauty and but moderate 
 health; there are some of the petted children 
 
48 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 of the wealthy, upon whom every care is 
 lavished from birth, and who still are ill to 
 look at and worse to marry. 
 
 All these special causes are admitted, 
 given their due share in lowering our 
 standards, but there is another far more uni- 
 versal in its application and its effects. Let 
 us look back on our little ancestors the 
 beasts, and see what keeps them so true to 
 type. 
 
 The type itself set by that balance of con- 
 ditions and forces we call "natural selection." 
 As the environment changes they must be 
 adapted to it, if they cannot so adapt them- 
 selves they die. Those who live are, by liv- 
 ing, proven capable of maintaining them- 
 selves. Every creature which has remained 
 on earth, while so many less effective kinds 
 die out, remains as a conqueror. The speed 
 of the deer — the constant use of speed — is 
 what keeps it alive and makes it healthy and 
 beautiful. The varied activities of the life 
 of a leopard are what have developed the 
 sinuous gracile strength we so admire. It 
 is what the creature does for its living, its 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 49 
 
 daily life-long exercise which makes it what 
 it is. 
 
 But there is another great natural force 
 which works steadily to keep all animals up 
 to the race standard ; that is sexual selection. 
 Throughout nature the male is the variant, 
 as we have already noted. His energy finds 
 vent not only in that profuse output of deco- 
 rative appendages Ward defines as "mascu- 
 line efforescence" but in variations not deco- 
 rative, not useful or desirable at all. 
 
 The female, on the other hand, varies 
 much less, remaining nearer the race type; 
 and her function is to select among these 
 varying males the specimens most valuable 
 to the race. In the intense masculine com- 
 petition the victor must necessarily be 
 stronger than his fellows; he is first proven 
 equal to his environment by having lived to 
 grow up, then more than equal to his fellows 
 by overcoming them. This higher grade of 
 selection also develops not only the charac- 
 teristics necessary to make a living; but sec- 
 ondary ones, often of a purely aesthetic na- 
 ture, which make much of what we call 
 beauty. Between the two, all who live must 
 
50 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 be up to a certain grade, and those who be- 
 come parents must be above it; a masterly 
 arrangement surely! 
 
 Here is where, during the period of our 
 human history, we in our newborn conscious- 
 ness and imperfect knowledge, have griev- 
 ously interfered with the laws of nature. 
 The ancient proprietary family, treating the 
 woman as a slave, keeping her a prisoner 
 and subject to the will of her master, cut 
 her off at once from the exercise of those 
 activities which alone develop and maintain 
 the race type. 
 
 Take the one simple quality of speed. We 
 are a creature built for speed, a free swift 
 graceful animal; and among savages this is 
 still seen — the capacity for running, mile 
 after mile, hour after hour. Running is as 
 natural a gait for genus homo as for genus 
 cervus. Now suppose among deer, the doe 
 was prohibited from running; the stag con- 
 tinuing free on the mountain; the doe living 
 in caves and pens, unequal to any exercise. 
 The effect on the species would be, in- 
 evitably, to reduce its speed. 
 
 In this way, by keeping women to one 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 51 
 
 small range of duties, and in most cases 
 housebound, we have interfered with natural 
 selection and its resultant health and beauty. 
 It can easily be seen what the effect on the 
 race would have been if all men had been 
 veiled and swathed, hidden in harems, kept 
 to the tent or house, and confined to the ac- 
 tivities of a house-servant. Our stalwart la- 
 borers, our proud soldiers, our athletes, 
 would never have appeared under such cir- 
 cumstances. The confinement to the house 
 alone, cutting women off from sunshine and 
 air, is by itself an injury; and the range of 
 occupation allowed them is not such as to 
 develop a high standard of either health or 
 beauty. Thus we have cut off half the race 
 from the strengthening influence of natural 
 selection, and so lowered our race standards 
 in large degree. 
 
 This alone, however, would not have had 
 such mischievous effects but for our further 
 blunder in completely reversing nature's or- 
 der of sexual selection. It is quite possible 
 that even under confinement and restriction 
 women could have kept up the race level, 
 passably, through this great function of se- 
 
52 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 lection; but here is the great fundamental 
 error of the Androcentric Culture. Assum- 
 ing to be the possessor of women, their 
 owner and master, able at will to give, buy 
 and sell, or do with as he pleases, man 
 became the selector. 
 
 It seems a simple change; and in those 
 early days, wholly ignorant of natural laws, 
 there was no suspicion that any mischief 
 would result. In the light of modern knowl- 
 edge, however, the case is clear. The woman 
 was deprived of the beneficent action of 
 natural selection, and the man was then, by 
 his own act freed from the stern but ele- 
 vating effect of sexual selection. Nothing 
 was required of the woman by natural se- 
 lection save such capacity as should please 
 her master ; nothing was required of the man 
 by sexual selection save power to take by 
 force, or buy, a woman. 
 
 It does not take a very high standard of 
 feminine intelligence, strength, skill, health, 
 or beauty to be a houseservant, or even a 
 housekeeper; witness the average. 
 
 It does not take a very high standard of 
 masculine intelligence, strength, skill, health 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 53 
 
 or beauty to maintain a woman in that ca- 
 pacity — witness the average. 
 
 Here at the very root of our physiological 
 process, at the beginning of life, we have 
 perverted the order of nature, and are suf- 
 fering the consequences. 
 
 It has been held by some that man as the 
 selector has developed beauty, more beauty 
 than we had before; and we point to the 
 charms of our women as compared with 
 those of the squaw. The first answer to this 
 is that the squaw belongs to a decadent race ; 
 that she too is subject to the man, that the 
 comparison to have weight should be made 
 between our women and the women of the 
 matriarchate — an obvious impossibility. We 
 have not on earth women in a state of nor- 
 mal freedom and full development; but we 
 have enough difference in their placing to 
 learn that human strength and beauty 
 grows with woman's freedom and activity. 
 
 The second answer is that much of what 
 man calls beauty in woman is not human 
 beauty at all, but gross overdevelopment of 
 certain points which appeal to him as a male. 
 The excessive fatness, previously referred 
 
54 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 to, is a case in point; that being considered 
 beauty in a woman which is in reality an 
 element of weakness, inefficiency and ill- 
 health. The relatively small size of women, 
 deliberately preferred, steadfastly chosen, 
 and so built into the race, is a blow at real 
 human progress in every particular. In our 
 upward journey we should and do grow 
 larger, leaving far behind us our dwarfish 
 progenitors. Yet the male, in his unnatural 
 position as selector, preferring for reasons 
 both practical and sentimental, to have "his 
 woman" smaller than himself, has deliber- 
 ately striven to lower the standard of size 
 in the race. We used to read in the novels 
 of the last generation, "He was a magnifi- 
 cent specimen of manhood" — "Her golden 
 head reached scarcely to his shoulder" — 
 "She was a fairy creatine — the tiniest of her 
 sex." Thus we have mated, and yet ex- 
 pected that by some hocus pocus the boys 
 would all "take after their father," and the 
 girls, their mother. In his efforts to im- 
 prove the breed of other animals, man has 
 never tried to deliberately cross the large 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 55 
 
 and small and expect to keep up the 
 standard of size. 
 
 As a male he is appealed to by the ultra- 
 feminine, and has given small thought to 
 effects on the race. He was not designed to 
 do the selecting. Under his fostering care 
 we have bred a race of women who are 
 physically weak enough to be handed about 
 like invalids; or mentally weak enough to 
 pretend they are — and to like it. We have 
 made women who respond so perfectly to 
 the force which made them, that they attach 
 all their idea of beauty to those characteris- 
 tics which attract men; sometimes humanly 
 ugly without even knowing it. 
 
 For instance, our long restriction to 
 house-limits, the heavy limitations of our 
 clothing, and the heavier ones of traditional 
 decorum, have made women disproportion- 
 ately short-legged. This is a particularly 
 undignified and injurious characteristic, 
 bred in women and inherited by men, most 
 seen among those races which keep their 
 women most closely. Yet when one woman 
 escapes the tendency and appears with a 
 normal length of femur and tibia, a normal 
 
56 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 height of hip and shoulder, she is criticized 
 and called awkward by her squatty sisters! 
 
 The most convenient proof of the inferior- 
 ity of women in human beauty is shown by 
 those composite statues prepared by Dr. 
 Sargent for the World's Fair of '93. These 
 were made from gymnasium measurements 
 of thousands of young collegians of both 
 sexes all over America. The statue of the 
 girl has a pretty face, small hands and feet, 
 rather nice arms, though weak; but the legs 
 are too thick and short; the chest and 
 shoulders poor; and the trunk is quite piti- 
 ful in its weakness. The figure of the man 
 is much better proportioned. 
 
 Thus the effect on human beauty of mas- 
 culine selection. 
 
 Beyond this positive deteriorative effect 
 on women through man's arbitrary choice 
 comes the negative effect of woman's lack 
 of choice. Bought or stolen or given by her 
 father, she was deprived of the innately 
 feminine right and duty of choosing. "Who 
 giveth this woman?" we still inquire in our 
 archaic marriage service, and one man steps 
 forward and gives her to another man. 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 57 
 
 Free, the female chose the victor, and the 
 vanquished went unmated — and without 
 progeny. Dependent, having to be fed and 
 cared for by some man, the victors take 
 their pick perhaps, but the vanquished take 
 what is left; and the poor women, "marry- 
 ing for a home," take anything. As a con- 
 sequence the inferior male is as free to trans- 
 mit his inferiority as the superior to give 
 better qualities, and does so — beyond com- 
 putation. In modern days, women are 
 freer, in some countries freer than in others ; 
 here in modern America freest of all; and 
 the result is seen in our improving standards 
 of health and beauty. 
 
 Still there remains the field of inter-mas- 
 culine competition, does there not? Do not 
 the males still struggle together? Is not 
 that as of old, a source of race advantage? 
 
 To some degree it is. When life was sim- 
 ple and our activities consisted mainly in 
 fighting and hard work ; the male who could 
 vanquish the others was bigger and stronger. 
 But inter-masculine competition ceases to be 
 of such advantage when we enter the field 
 of social service. What is required in or- 
 
58 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 ganized society is the specialization of the 
 individual, the development of special tal- 
 ents, not always of immediate benefit to the 
 man himself, but of ultimate benefit to so- 
 ciety. The best social servant, progressive, 
 meeting future needs, is almost always at a 
 disadvantage beside the well-established 
 lower types. We need, for social service, 
 qualities quite different from the simple 
 masculine characteristics — desire, combat, 
 self-expression. 
 
 By keeping what we call "the outside 
 world" so wholly male, we keep up mascu- 
 line standards at the expense of human ones. 
 This may be broadly seen in the slow and 
 painful development of industry and sci- 
 ence as compared to the easy dominance of 
 warfare throughout all history until our own 
 times. 
 
 The effect of all this ultra masculine com- 
 petition upon health and beauty is but too 
 plainly to be seen. Among men the male 
 idea of what is good looking is accentuated 
 beyond reason. Read about any "hero" you 
 please; or study the products of the illus- 
 trator and note the broad shoulders, the 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 59 
 
 rugged features, the strong, square de- 
 termined jaw. That jaw is in evidence if 
 everything else fails. He may be cross-eyed, 
 wide-eared, thick-necked, bandy-legged — 
 what you please; but he must have a more 
 or less prognathous jaw. 
 
 Meanwhile any anthropologist will show 
 you that the line of human development is 
 away from that feature of the bulldog and 
 the alligator, and toward the measured dig- 
 nity of the Greek type. The possession of 
 that kind of jaw may enable male to con- 
 quer male, but does not make him of any 
 more service to society; of any better health 
 or higher beauty. 
 
 Further, in the external decoration of our 
 bodies, what is the influence here of mascu- 
 line dominance. 
 
 We have before spoken of the peculiar 
 position of our race in that the woman is the 
 only female creature who carries the burden 
 of sex ornament. This amazing reversal of 
 the order of nature results at its mildest in 
 a perversion of the natural feminine in- 
 stincts of love and service, and an appear- 
 ance of the masculine instincts of self-ex- 
 
60 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 pression and display. Alone among all fe- 
 male tilings do women decorate and preen 
 themselves and exhibit their borrowed 
 plumage (literally!) to attract the favor of 
 the male. This ignominy is forced upon 
 them by their position of economic depend- 
 ence; and their general helplessness. As 
 all broader life is made to depend, for them, 
 on whom they marry, indeed as even the ne- 
 cessities of life so often depend on their 
 marrying someone, they have been driven 
 into this form of competition, so alien to the 
 true female attitude. 
 
 The result is enough to make angels weep 
 — and laugh. Perhaps no step in the evolu- 
 tion of beauty went farther than our human 
 power of making a continuous fabric; soft 
 and mobile, showing any color and texture 
 desired. The beauty of the human body is 
 supreme, and when we add to it the flow of 
 color, the ripple of fluent motion, that comes 
 of a soft, light garment over free limbs — 
 it is a new field of loveliness and delight. 
 Naturally this should have filled the whole 
 world with a new pleasure. Our garments, 
 first under right natural selection develop- 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 61 
 
 ing perfect use, under right sex selection de- 
 veloping beauty; and further, as our human 
 aesthetic sense progresses, showing a noble 
 symbolism; would have been an added 
 strength and glory, a ceaseless joy. 
 
 What is the case? 
 
 Men, under a too strictly inter-masculine 
 environment, have evolved the mainly useful 
 but beautiless costume common to-day; and 
 women — ? 
 
 Women wear beautiful garments when 
 they happen to be the fashion; and ugly 
 garments when they are the fashion, and 
 show no signs of knowing the difference. 
 They show no added pride in the beautiful, 
 no hint of mortification in the hideous, and 
 are not even sensitive under criticism, or 
 open to any persuasion or argument. Why 
 should they be? 
 
 Their condition, physical and mental, is 
 largely abnormal, their whole passionate ab- 
 sorption in dress and decoration is abnormal, 
 and they have never looked, from a frankly 
 human standpoint, at their position and its 
 peculiarities, until the present age. 
 
 In the effect of our wrong relation on the 
 
62 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 world's health, we have spoken of the check 
 to vigor and growth due to the housebound 
 state of women and their burdensome 
 clothes. There follow other influences, 
 similar in origin, even more evil in result. 
 To roughly and briefly classify we may dis- 
 tinguish the diseases due to bad air, to bad 
 food, and that field of cruel mischief we are 
 only now beginning to discuss — the diseases 
 directly due to the erroneous relation be- 
 tween men and women. 
 
 We are the only race where the female 
 depends on the male for a livelihood. We 
 are the only race that practices prostitution. 
 From the first harmless-looking but ab- 
 normal general relation, follows the well 
 recognized evil of the second, so long called 
 "a social necessity," and from it, in deadly 
 sequence, comes the "wages of sin"; death 
 not only of the guilty, but of the innocent. 
 It is no light part of our criticism of the 
 Androcentric Culture that a society based 
 on maeculine desires alone, has willingly sac- 
 rificed such an army of women; and has re- 
 paid the sacrifice by the heaviest punish- 
 ments. 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 63 
 
 That the unfortunate woman should 
 sicken and die was held to be her just pun- 
 ishment; that man too should bear part pen- 
 alty was found unavoidable, though much 
 legislation and medical effort has been spent 
 to shield him; but to the further conse- 
 quences society is but now waking up. 
 
 Sheltered by the customs and sanctions 
 of a civilization built and upheld by his own 
 sex, man has brought home to his helpless 
 and innocent family the "wages of sin" — 
 and paid them out most heavily. We are 
 now beginning to learn what a percentage of 
 blindness, of epilepsy, of many horrible 
 forms of illness, idiocy and deformity, of 
 sterility, of babies never born alive, or 
 dying in their cradles; and of the ruined 
 health of wives, their subjection to surgical 
 operation, their wretched lives:— is due to 
 this terribly frequent offence. When a more 
 human or less masculine standard of living 
 is at last reached, we shall see these matters 
 in their true light. The present purpose is 
 not to pile up horrors, nor to give technical 
 details; but to point out that this enormous 
 
64 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 share of disease and degeneracy is directly 
 traceable to our Androcentric Culture. 
 
 It is inconceivable that a civilization even 
 half representing women, could so sin 
 against Mother and Child; so poison the 
 current of life at its very springs. 
 
 No heavier single charge can be brought 
 against a civilization in which women are 
 dependent upon men than this; that, man, 
 the "natural protector," has not only 
 doomed to misery and ruin so large a num- 
 ber of the protected; blamed and punished 
 in them what he did not blame and punish in 
 himself; then blamed their more fortunate 
 sisters for this cruel judgment; and, above 
 all, brought to the innocent and trusting 
 wife and the helpless child, the penalty of 
 his misdeeds. 
 
 Much less impressive, but more wide 
 spread are the other two lines in which our 
 health is injured by this too masculine 
 order. Modern therapeutics is now learn- 
 ing how many of our disorders of the throat 
 and lungs may be generally classified as 
 "house-diseases. " Certain bacteria flourish 
 ceaselessly in the dusty heat of our houses. 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 65 
 
 The more people are shut up and used to 
 breathing impoverished air, the less able 
 are they to meet natural temperatures. We 
 become acclimated to bad air, as it were, and 
 do not object, in church, car, theatre, 
 crowded store, to the same atmosphere we 
 are used to in our houses. Against the house 
 habit strives the new knowledge of hygienist 
 and physician, but the habit is older and 
 wider than the knowledge, and we as a 
 people submit our lungs to a degree of foul- 
 ness, which were it offered in food, we should 
 repudiate with horror. 
 
 Now women are not naturally cave 
 dwellers any more than men. They have 
 been confined to the house for reasons 
 quite outside the needs of motherhood. Only 
 to-day, within a lifetime, are we at last re- 
 learning what a free outdoor life can do for 
 the girl as well as the boy, a lesson lost since 
 Sparta fell. The woman should compare 
 in size and vigor with the man as the lioness 
 with the lion, or the migrating mother stork 
 with her mate. A house life is not good for 
 man, woman, or child; her enforced limita- 
 tions react on him and on their little ones. 
 
GG THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 Among all the varied unpleasantnesses 
 known to the doctor, he makes least prog- 
 ress in opposing what are known as "food 
 diseases." We suffer enough in many ways ; 
 but our difficulties with "the alimentary 
 tract" are most common and least cured. 
 Wise, strong, highly civilized are we, rich 
 powerful, somewhat educated, yet from the 
 slowly departing teeth to the rapidly re- 
 moved appendix we seem helplessly open 
 to disease. Whatever else we have learned 
 in our long ascent, we have not learned what, 
 where and how to eat. 
 
 It is most singular. 
 
 No other animal has such difficulty (ex- 
 cept to some degree the ones we feed) . To- 
 day we are bringing more knowledge to bear 
 on this subject, we are trying to teach bet- 
 ter food habits, but we do not recognize the 
 constant universal cause of the trouble, 
 which is simply this ; that every man has one 
 whole woman to cook for him. If he can 
 afford it, he has more than one. "The way 
 to a man's heart is his stomach," we are told; 
 and he has for so long confounded the two 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 67 
 
 that the words "Wife" and "Cook" are al- 
 most synonymous to him. 
 
 The dependent woman has this business 
 of cooking as the one main way in which to 
 show her love, to fulfill her service; and — 
 alas! secure any special concessions she de- 
 sires. 
 
 "Tell me the secret of married happi- 
 ness!" says the blooming bride-to-be to the 
 sweet-faced grandmother. And that placid 
 dame replies with unexpected fervor, 
 "Feed the brute!" 
 
 The point here suggested is that this 
 method of feeding is not good for us. It is 
 not healthy to have a loving servant always 
 ministering to one's desires. Less devotion 
 and more knowledge, less affection and a 
 higher grade of skill, are needed in this great 
 business of feeding the world. We cater to 
 the appetite continuously. We know what 
 John likes ; but we do not know in the least 
 what the various chemicals we daily present 
 to him do to his unhappy inside. Neither 
 do we realize that this constant ministering 
 service to the personal desires of men in the 
 home is responsible, to a terrible extent, for 
 
68 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 their helpless self-indulgence in the world 
 outside. The psychic effect of "Mother's 
 cooking" is a thing we have not considered. 
 No art, no science, no business, can grow 
 far when kept to a domestic level, when 
 the product of labor is for one person only, 
 and is governed not by knowledge but by 
 desire. The wife-servant, ministering de- 
 votedly to her lord, has not served his best 
 interests. A relation that is wrong at its 
 base cannot work out right in any line. 
 
 The health of the world is not ensured by 
 making women the servants of men. 
 
 To-day the human woman and the human 
 man are alike able to discuss transmitting 
 deformity and disease to their beloved ones. 
 A new moral sense is called for here, and is 
 slowly appearing among us. A moral sense 
 that shall rate the mother's responsibilty in 
 selecting the father of her children, and in 
 securing to them a pure inheritance in con- 
 stitution, far higher than the preservation 
 of the hush-and-cover policy of our racial 
 beginnings. 
 
 Further than that we need a new judg- 
 ment upon the offenders in this case; not 
 
HEALTH AND BEAUTY 69 
 
 merely as breakers of our present moral 
 law, not merely as offenders against our 
 social canons — an offense so light and fre- 
 quent as to meet small rebuke; but as plain 
 criminals, chargeable with poisoning, may- 
 hem and murder. 
 
 If a man gives his wife arsenic, he is held 
 criminally responsible; if he shoots his child, 
 or maims Mm with an axe. Wherein is a 
 man less guilty who knowingly transmits 
 disease to a trusting wife, who causes blind- 
 ness and deformity and idiocy in his chil- 
 dren, whose lightest offense is to bring ster- 
 ility and merciful death? 
 
70 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MEN AND ART 
 
 AMONG the many counts in which 
 women have been proven inferior 
 to men in human development is 
 the oft-heard charge that there are no great 
 women artists. Where one or two are 
 proudly exhibited in evidence, they are 
 either pooh-poohed as not very great, or 
 held to be the trifling exceptions which do 
 but prove the rule. 
 
 Defenders of women generally make the 
 mistake of over-estimating their perform- 
 ances, instead of accepting, and explaining, 
 the visible facts. What are the facts as to 
 the relation of men and women to art ? And 
 what, in especial, has been the effect upon 
 art of a solely masculine expression? 
 
 When we look for the beginnings of art, 
 
MEN AND ART 71 
 
 we find ourselves in a period of crude deco- 
 ration of the person and of personal be- 
 longings. Tattooing, for instance, is an 
 early form of decorative art, still in practice 
 among certain classes, even in advanced 
 people. Most boys, if they are in contact 
 with this early art, admire it, and wish to 
 adorn themselves therewith; some do it, too, 
 to later mortification. Early personal 
 decoration consisted largely in direct muti- 
 lation of the body, and the hanging upon it, 
 or fastening to it, of decorative objects. 
 This we see among savages still, in its gross 
 and primitive forms monopolized by men, 
 then shared by women, and, in our time, left 
 almost wholly to them. In personal decora- 
 tion, to-day, women are still near the savage. 
 The "artists" developed in this field of art 
 are the tonsorial, the sartorial, and all those 
 specialized adorners of the body commonly 
 known as "beauty doctors." 
 
 Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists 
 are men. The greatest milliners, the great- 
 est dressmakers and tailors, the greatest 
 hairdressers, and the masters and designers 
 in all our decorative toilettes and acces- 
 
72 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 sories, are men. Women, in this as in so 
 many other lines, consume rather than pro- 
 duce. They carry the major part of per- 
 sonal decoration to-day; but the decorator 
 is the man. In the decoration of objects, 
 woman, as the originator of primitive indus- 
 try, originated also the primitive arts; and 
 in the pottery, basketry, leatherwork, needle- 
 work, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing, 
 and embroideries of ancient peoples, we see 
 the work of the woman decorator. Much of 
 this is strong and beautiful, but its time is 
 long past. The art which is part of indus- 
 try, natural, simple, spontaneous, making 
 beauty in every object of use, adding pleas- 
 ure to labor and to life, is not Art with a 
 large A, the Art which requires Artists, 
 among whom are so few women of note. 
 
 Art as a profession, and the Artist as a 
 professional, came later; and by that time 
 women had left the freedom and power of 
 the matriarchate and become slaves in vary- 
 ing degree. The women who were idle pets 
 in harems, or the women who worked hard 
 as servants, were alike cut off from the joy 
 of making tilings. Where constructive work 
 
MEN AND ART 73 
 
 remained to them, art remained, in its early 
 decorative form. Men, in the proprietary 
 family, restricting the natural industry of 
 women to personal service, cut off their art 
 with their industry, and by so much impov- 
 erished the world. 
 
 There is no more conspicuously pathetic 
 proof of the aborted development of woman 
 than this commonplace — their lack of a civ- 
 ilized art sense. Not only in the childish and 
 savage display upon their bodies, but in the 
 pitiful products they hang upon the walls 
 of the home, is seen the arrest in normal 
 growth. 
 
 After ages of culture, in which men have 
 developed Architecture, Sculpture, Paint- 
 ing, Music and the Drama, we find women 
 in their primitive environment making 
 flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted, doing 
 mottoes of perforated cardboard, making 
 crazy quilts and mats and "tidies" — as if 
 they lived in a long past age, or belonged to 
 a lower race. 
 
 This, as part of the general injury to 
 women dating from the beginning of our 
 androcentric culture, reacts heavily upon the 
 
74 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 world at large. Men, specializing, giving 
 their lives to the continuous pursuit of one 
 line of service, have lifted our standard in 
 aesthetic culture, as they have in other mat- 
 ters; but by refusing the same growth to 
 women, they have not only weakened and 
 reduced the output, but ruined the market 
 as it were, hopelessly and permanently kept 
 down the level of taste. 
 
 Among the many sides of this great ques- 
 tion, some so terrible, some so pathetic, some 
 so utterly absurd, tliis particular phase of 
 life is especially easy to study and under- 
 stand, and has its own elements of amuse- 
 ment. Men, holding women at the level of 
 domestic service, going on themselves to 
 lonely heights of achievement, have found 
 their efforts hampered and their attainments 
 rendered barren and unsatisfactory by the 
 amazing indifference of the world at large. 
 As the world at large consists half of 
 women, and wholly of their children, it 
 would seem patent to the meanest under- 
 standing that the women must be allowed 
 to rise in order to lift the world. But such 
 has not been the method — heretofore. 
 
MEN AND ART 75 
 
 We have spoken so far in this chapter of 
 the effect of men on art through their 
 interference with the human growth of 
 women. There are other sides to the ques- 
 tion. Let us consider once more the essen- 
 tial characteristics of maleness, and see how 
 they have effected art, keeping always in 
 mind the triple distinction between mas- 
 culine, feminine and human. Perhaps we 
 shall best see this difference by considering 
 what the development of art might have 
 been on purely human lines. 
 
 The human creature, as such, naturally 
 delights in construction, and adds decora- 
 tion to construction as naturally. The cook, 
 making little regular patterns round the 
 edge of the pie, does so from a purely human 
 instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regular- 
 ity, symmetry, repetition, and alternation. 
 Had this natural social instinct grown 
 unchecked in us, it would have manifested 
 itself in a certain proportion of specialists — 
 artists of all sorts — and an accompanying 
 development of appreciation on the part of 
 the rest of us. Such is the case in primitive 
 art; the maker of beauty is upheld and 
 
76 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 rewarded by a popular appreciation of her 
 work — or his. 
 
 Had this condition remained, we should 
 find a general level of artistic expression 
 and appreciation far higher than we see 
 now. Take the one field of textile art, for 
 instance, that wide and fluent medium of 
 expression, the making of varied fabrics, 
 the fashioning of garments and the decora- 
 tion of them — all this is human work and 
 human pleasure. It should have led us to a 
 condition where every human being was a 
 pleasure to the eye, appropriately and 
 beautifully clothed. 
 
 Our real condition in this field is too 
 patent to need emphasis; the stiff, black 
 ugliness of our men's attire, the irritating 
 variegated folly of our women's, the way in 
 which we spoil the beauty and shame the 
 dignity of childhood by modes of dress. 
 
 In normal human growth, our houses 
 would be a pleasure to the eye ; our furniture 
 and utensils, all our social products, would 
 blossom into beauty as naturally as they still 
 do in those low stages of social evolution 
 
MEN AND ART 77 
 
 where our major errors have not yet borne 
 full fruit. 
 
 Applied art in all its forms is a human 
 function, common to every one to some 
 degree, either in production or apprecia- 
 tion or both. "Pure art," as an ideal, is also 
 human; and the single-hearted devotion of 
 the true artist to this ideal is one of the high- 
 est forms of the social sacrifice. Of all the 
 thousand ways by which humanity is spe- 
 cialized for inter-service, none is more exqui- 
 site than this; the evolution of the social 
 Eye, or Ear, or Voice, the development of 
 those whose work is wholly for others, and 
 to whom the appreciation of others is as 
 the bread of life. This we should have in a 
 properly developed community; the pleas- 
 ure of applied art in the making and using 
 of everything we have, and then the high 
 joy of the Great Artist, and the noble work 
 thereof, spread far and wide. 
 
 What do we find ? 
 
 Applied art at a very low level, small joy 
 either for the maker or the user. Pure art, 
 a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on 
 by an elect few, who openly despise the 
 
78 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 unappreciative many. Art has become an 
 occult profession requiring a long special 
 education even to enjoy, and evolving a 
 jargon of criticism which becomes more 
 esoteric yearly. 
 
 Let us now see what part in this unde- 
 sirable outcome is due to our Androcentric 
 Culture. 
 
 As soon as the male of our species 
 assumed the exclusive right to perform all 
 social functions, he necessarily brought to 
 that performance the advantages — and dis- 
 advantages — of maleness, of those dominant 
 characteristics, desire, combat, self-expres- 
 sion. 
 
 Desire has overweighted art in many visi- 
 ble forms, it is prominent in painting and 
 music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has 
 pitifully degraded dancing. 
 
 Combat is not so easily expressed in art, 
 where even competition is on a high plane; 
 but the last element is the main evil, self- 
 expression. This impulse is inherently and 
 ineradicably masculine. It rests on that 
 most basic of distinctions between the sexes, 
 the centripetal and centrifugal forces of 
 
MEN AND ART 79 
 
 the universe. In the very nature of the 
 sperm-cell and the germ-cell we find this 
 difference: the one attracts, gathers, draws 
 in; the other repels, scatters, pushes out. 
 That projective impulse is seen in the male 
 nature everywhere, the constant urge 
 toward expression, to all boasting and dis- 
 play. This spirit, like all things masculine, 
 is perfectly right and admirable in its place. 
 
 It is the duty of the male, as a male, to 
 vary ; bursting forth in a thousand changing 
 modifications — the female, selecting, may so 
 incorporate beneficial changes in the race. It 
 is his duty to thus express himself — an essen- 
 tially masculine duty ; but masculinity is one 
 thing, and art is another. Neither the mas- 
 culine nor the feminine has any place in art 
 — Art is Human. 
 
 It is not in any faintest degree allied to 
 the personal process of reproduction; but is 
 a social process, a most distinctive social 
 process, quite above the plane of sex. The 
 true artist transcends his sex, or her sex. If 
 this is not the case, the art suffers. 
 
 Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art; 
 direct expression of emotion through the 
 
80 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 body; beginning in sub-human type, among 
 male birds, as the bower-bird of New 
 Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing 
 and caper before their mates. Among early 
 peoples we find it a common form of social 
 expression in tribal dances of all sorts, 
 religious, military, and other. Later it be- 
 comes a more explicit form of celebration, 
 as among the Greeks; in whose exquisite 
 personal culture dancing and music held 
 high place. 
 
 But under the progressive efforts of 
 purely masculine dominance we find the 
 broader human elements of dancing left out, 
 and the sex-element more and more empha- 
 sized. As practiced by men alone dancing 
 has become a mere display of physical 
 agility, a form of exhibition common to all 
 males. As practiced by men and women 
 together we have our social dances, so lack- 
 ing in all the varied beauty of posture and 
 expression, so steadily becoming a pleasant 
 form of dalliance. 
 
 As practiced by women alone we have one 
 of the clearest proofs of the degrading effect 
 of masculine dominance — the dancing girl. 
 
MEN AND ART 81 
 
 In the frank sensualism of the Orient, this 
 personage is admired and enjoyed on her 
 merits. We, more sophisticated in this 
 matter, joke shamefacedly about "the bald- 
 headed row," and occasionally burst forth in 
 shrill scandal over some dinner party where 
 a lady clad in a veil and a bracelet dances on 
 the table. Nowhere else in the whole range 
 of life on earth, is this degradation found — 
 the female capering and prancing before the 
 male. It is absolutely and essentially his 
 function, not hers. That we, as a race, pre- 
 sent this pitiful spectacle, a natural art 
 wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art 
 degraded to ignoble ends, has one clear 
 cause. 
 
 Architecture, in its own nature, is least 
 affected by that same cause. The human 
 needs secured by it, are so human, so unes- 
 capably human, that we find less trace of 
 excessive masculinity than in other arts. It 
 meets our social demands, it expresses in 
 lasting form our social feeling, up to the 
 highest; and it has been injured not so much 
 by an excess of masculinity as by a lack of 
 femininity. 
 
82 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 The most universal architectural expres- 
 sion is in the home; the home is essentially a 
 place for the woman and the child, yet the 
 needs of woman and child are not expressed 
 in our domestic architecture. The home is 
 built on lines of ancient precedent, mainly 
 as an industrial form ; the kitchen is its work- 
 ing centre rather than the nursery. 
 
 Each man wishes his home to preserve and 
 seclude his woman, his little harem of one; 
 and in it she is to labor for his comfort or 
 to manifest his ability to maintain her in 
 idleness. The house is the physical expres- 
 sion of the limitations of women; and as 
 such it fills the world with a small drab ugli- 
 ness. A dwelling house is rarely a beauti- 
 ful object. In order to be such, it should 
 truly express simple and natural relations; 
 or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop. 
 
 The deadlock for architectural progress, 
 the low level of our general taste, the ever- 
 lasting predominance of the commonplace 
 in buildings, is the natural result of the pro- 
 prietary family and its expression in this 
 form. 
 
 In sculpture we have a noble art forcing 
 
MEN AND ART 83 
 
 itself into some service through many 
 limitations. Its check, as far as it comes 
 under this line of study, has been indicated 
 in our last chapter; the degradation of the 
 human body, the vicious standards of sex- 
 consciousness enforced under the name of 
 modesty, the covered ugliness which we do 
 not recognize, all this is a deadly injury to 
 free high work in sculpture. 
 
 With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart 
 and athletic, with the high standards of 
 beauty and of decorum which we can never 
 have without free womanhood, we should 
 show a different product in this great art. 
 
 An interesting note in passing is this: 
 When we seek to express sculpturally our 
 noblest ideas, Truth, Justice, Liberty, we 
 use the woman's body as the highest human 
 type. But in doing this, the artist, true to 
 humanity and not biased by sex, gives us a 
 strong, grand figure, beautiful indeed, but 
 never decorated. Fancy Liberty in ruffles 
 and frills, with rings in her ears — or nose. 
 
 Music is injured by a one-side handling, 
 partly in the excess of the one dominant 
 masculine passion, partly by the general 
 
84 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 presence of egoism, that tendency to self- 
 expression instead of social expression, 
 which so disfigures our art; and this is true 
 also of poetry. 
 
 Miles and miles of poetry consist of the 
 ceaseless outcry of the male for the female, 
 which is by no means so overwhelming a 
 feature of human life as he imagines it; and 
 other miles express his other feelings, with 
 that ingenious lack of reticence which is at 
 its base essentially masculine. Having a 
 pain, the poet must needs pour it forth, that 
 his woe be shared and sympathized with. 
 
 As more and more women writers flock 
 into the field, there is room for fine historic 
 study of the difference in sex feeling, and 
 the gradual emergence of the human note. 
 
 Literature, and in especial the art of 
 fiction, is so large a field for this study that 
 it will have a chapter to itself; this one but 
 touching on these various forms, and indi- 
 cating lines of observation. 
 
 That best known form of art which to 
 the lay mind needs no qualifying descrip- 
 tion — painting — is also a wide field; and 
 cannot be done full justice to within these 
 
MEN AND ART 85 
 
 limits. The effect upon it of too much mas- 
 culinity is not so much in choice of subject 
 as in method and spirit. The artist sees 
 beauty of form and color where the ordin- 
 ary observer does not; and paints the old 
 and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the 
 young and beautiful — sometimes. If there 
 is in some an over-emphasis of feminine 
 attractions it is counterbalanced in others by 
 a far broader line of work. 
 
 But the main evils of a too masculine art 
 lie in the emphasis laid on the self-expres- 
 sion. The artist, passionately conscious of 
 how he feels, strives to make other people 
 aware of these sensations. This is now so 
 generally accepted by critics, so seriously 
 advanced by painters, that what is called 
 "the art world" accepts it as established. 
 
 If a man paints the sea, it is not to make 
 you see and feel as a sight of that same 
 ocean would, but to make you see and feel 
 how he, personally, was affected by it; a 
 matter surely of the narrowest importance. 
 The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sen- 
 sitive, necessarily, and full of the natural 
 urge to expression of the sex, uses the 
 
86 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 medium of art as ingenuously as the part- 
 ridge-cock uses his wings in drumming on 
 the log, or the bull moose stamps and 
 bellows; not narrowly as a mate call, but as 
 a form of expression of his personal sensa- 
 tions. 
 
 The higher the artist the more human he 
 is, the broader his vision, the more he sees 
 for humanity, and expresses for humanity, 
 and the less personal, the less ultra-mas- 
 culine, is his expression. 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 87 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MASCULINE LITERATURE 
 
 WHEN we are offered a "woman's" 
 paper, page, or column, we find 
 it filled with matter supposed to 
 appeal to women as a sex or class ; the writer 
 mainly dwelling upon the Kaiser's four K's 
 Kuchen, Kinder, Kirche, Kleider. They 
 iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussion 
 of cookery old and new, of the care of chil- 
 dren, of the overwhelming subject of cloth- 
 ing, and of moral instruction. All this is 
 recognized as "feminine" literature, and it 
 must have some appeal, else the women 
 would not read it. What parallel have we 
 in "masculine" literature? 
 
 "None!" is the proud reply. "Men are 
 people ! Women, being 'the sex/ have their 
 limited feminine interests, their feminine 
 point of view, which must be provided for. 
 
88 THE MAN-MADE WO RED 
 
 Men, however, are not restricted — to them 
 belongs the world's literature!" 
 
 Yes, it has belonged to them — ever since 
 there was any. They have written it and 
 they have read it. It is only lately that 
 women, generally speaking, have been 
 taught to read; still more lately that they 
 have been allowed to write. It is but a little 
 while since Harriet Martineau concealed 
 her writing beneath her sewing when visi- 
 tors came in — writing was "masculine" — 
 sewing, "feminine." 
 
 We have not, it is true, confined men to 
 a narrowly constructed "masculine sphere," 
 and composed a special literature suited to 
 it. Their effect on literature has been 
 far wider than that, monopolizing this form 
 of art with special favor. It was suited 
 above all others to the dominant impulse of 
 self-expression, and being, as we have seen, 
 essentially and continually "the sex;" they 
 have impressed that sex upon this art over- 
 whelmingly; they have given the world a 
 masculized literature. 
 
 It is hard for us to realize this. We can 
 readily see, that if women had always written 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 89 
 
 the books, no men either writing or reading 
 them, that would have surely "feminized" 
 our literature ; but we have not in our minds 
 the concept, much less the word, for an over- 
 masculized influence. 
 
 Men having been accepted as humanity, 
 women but a side-issue; (most literally if we 
 accept the Hebrew legend!), whatever men 
 did or said was human — and not to be criti- 
 cized. In no department of life is it easier 
 to controvert this old belief ; to show how the 
 male sex as such differs from the human 
 type; and how this maleness has monopo- 
 lized and disfigured a great social function. 
 
 Human life is a very large affair; and 
 literature is its chief art. We live, humanly, 
 only through our power of communication. 
 Speech gives us this power laterally, as it 
 were, in immediate personal contact. For 
 permanent use speech becomes oral tra- 
 dition — a poor dependence. Literature 
 gives not only an infinite multiplication to 
 the lateral spread of communion but adds 
 the vertical reach. Through it we know the 
 past, govern the present, and influence the 
 future. In its serviceable common forms it 
 
90 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 is the indispensable daily servant of our 
 lives; in its nobler flights as a great art no 
 means of human inter-change goes so far. 
 
 In these brief limits we can touch but 
 lightly on some phases of so great a sub- 
 ject, and will rest the case mainly on the 
 effect of an exclusively masculine handling 
 of the two fields of history and fiction. In 
 poetry and the drama the same influence is 
 easily traced, but in the first two it is so 
 baldly prominent as to defy objection. 
 
 History is, or should be, the story of our 
 racial life. What have men made it? The 
 story of warfare and conquest. Begin at 
 the very beginning with the carven stones 
 of Egypt, the clay records of Chaldea, what 
 do we find of history? 
 
 "I, Pharaoh, King of Kings! Lord of 
 Lords!" (etc. etc.), "went down into the 
 miserable land of Kush, and slew of the 
 inhabitants thereof an hundred and forty 
 and two thousands!" That, or something 
 like it, is the kind of record early history 
 gives us. 
 
 The story of Conquering Kings, whom 
 and how many they killed and enslaved, the 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 91 
 
 grovelling adulation of the abased, the 
 unlimited jubilation of the victor, from the 
 primitive state of most ancient kings, and 
 the Roman triumphs where queens walked 
 in chains, down to our omnipresent soldier's 
 monuments; the story of war and conquest 
 — war and conquest — over and over, with 
 such boasting and triumph, such cock-crow 
 and flapping of wings as show most unmis- 
 takably the natural source. 
 
 All this will strike the reader at first as 
 biased and unfair. "That was the way 
 people lived in those days!" says the reader. 
 
 No — it was not the way women lived. 
 
 "Oh, women!" says the reader, "Of course 
 not ! Women are different." 
 
 Yes, women are different; and men are 
 different! Both of them, as sexes, differ 
 from the human norm, which is social life 
 and all social development. Society was 
 slowly growing in all those black, blind 
 years. The arts, the sciences, the trades and 
 crafts and professions, religion, philosophy, 
 government, law, commerce, agriculture — 
 all the human processes were going on as 
 well as they were able, between wars. 
 
92 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 The male naturally fights, and naturally 
 crows, triumphs over his rival and takes the 
 prize — therefore was he made male. Male- 
 ness means war. 
 
 Not only so; but as a male, he cares only 
 for male interests. Men, being the sole 
 arbiters of what should be done and said 
 and written, have given us not only a social 
 growth scarred and thwarted from the be- 
 ginning by continual destruction; but a his- 
 tory which is one unbroken record of 
 courage and red cruelty, of triumph and 
 black shame. 
 
 As to what went on that was of real con- 
 sequence, the great slow steps of the work- 
 ing world, the discoveries and inventions, 
 the real progress of humanity — that was not 
 worth recording, from a masculine point of 
 view. Within this last century, "the 
 woman's century," the century of the great 
 awakening, the rising demand for freedom, 
 political, economic, and domestic, we are 
 beginning to write real history, human his- 
 tory, and not merely masculine history. But 
 that great branch of literature — Hebrew, 
 Greek, Roman, and all down later times, 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 93 
 
 shows beyond all question, the influence of 
 our androcentric culture. 
 
 Literature is the most powerful and neces- 
 sary of the arts, and fiction is its broadest 
 form. If art "holds the mirror up to 
 nature" this art's mirror is the largest of all, 
 the most used. Since our very life depends 
 on some communication, and our prog- 
 ress is in proportion to our fullness and 
 freedom of communication, since real com- 
 munication requires mutual understanding; 
 so in the growth of the social consciousness, 
 we note from the beginning a passionate 
 interest in other people's lives. 
 
 The art which gives humanity conscious- 
 ness is the most vital art. Our greatest 
 dramatists are lauded for their breadth of 
 knowledge of "human nature," their range 
 of emotion and understanding; our greatest 
 poets are those who most deeply and widely 
 experience and reveal the feelings of the 
 human heart; and the power of fiction is 
 that it can reach and express this great field 
 of human life with no limits but those of the 
 author. 
 
 When fiction began it was the legitimate 
 
94 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 child of oral tradition, a product of natural 
 brain activity ; the legend constructed instead 
 of remembered. (This stage is with us yet 
 as seen in the constant changes in repetition 
 of popular jokes and stories.) 
 
 Fiction to-day has a much wider range; 
 yet it is still restricted, heavily and most 
 mischievously restricted. 
 
 What is the preferred subject matter of 
 fiction ? 
 
 There are two main branches found every- 
 where, from the Romaunt of the Rose to the 
 Purplish Magazine; — the Story of Adven- 
 ture, and the Love Story. 
 
 The Story-of- Adventure branch is not so 
 thick as the other by any means, but it is 
 a sturdy bough for all that. Stevenson and 
 Kipling have proved its immense popularity, 
 with the whole brood of detective stories and 
 the tales of successful rascality we call "pic- 
 turesque." Our most popular weekly shows 
 the broad appeal of this class of fiction. 
 
 All these tales of adventure, of struggle 
 and difficulty, of hunting and fishing and 
 fighting, of robbing and murdering, catch- 
 ing and punishing, are distinctly and essen- 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 95 
 
 tially masculine. They do not touch on 
 human processes, social processes, but on the 
 special field of predatory excitement so long 
 the sole province of men. 
 
 It is to be noted here that even in the over- 
 whelming rise of industrial interests to-day, 
 these, when used as the basis for a story, are 
 forced into line with one, or both, of these 
 two main branches of fiction; — conflict or 
 love. Unless the story has one of these 
 "interests" in it, there is no story — so holds 
 the editor; the dictum being, put plainly, 
 "life has no interests except conflict and 
 love!" 
 
 It is surely something more than a coin- 
 cidence that these are the two essential 
 features of masculinity — Desire and Com- 
 bat — Love and War. 
 
 As a matter of fact the major interests of 
 life are in line with its major processes; and 
 these — in our stage of human development 
 — are more varied than our fiction would 
 have us believe. Half the world consists of 
 women, we should remember, who are types 
 of human life as well as men, and their 
 major processes are not those of conflict and 
 
96 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 adventure, their love means more than mat- 
 ing. Even on so poor a line of distinction 
 as the "woman's column" offers, if women 
 are to be kept to their four K's, there should 
 be a "men's column" also, and all the "sport- 
 ing news" and fish stories be put in that; 
 they are not world interests, they are male 
 interests. 
 
 Now for the main branch — the Love 
 Story. Ninety per cent, of fiction is in this 
 line; this is pre-eminently the major interest 
 of life — given in fiction. What is the love- 
 story, as rendered by this art? 
 
 It is the story of the pre-marital struggle 
 It is the Adventures of Him in Pursuit of 
 Her — and it stops when he gets her ! Story 
 after story, age after age, over and over and 
 over, this ceaseless repetition of the Prelim- 
 inaries. 
 
 Here is Human Life. In its large sense, 
 its real sense, it is a matter of inter-relation 
 between individuals and groups, covering all 
 emotions, all processes, all experiences. Out 
 of this vast field of human life fiction arbit- 
 rarily selects one emotion, one process, one 
 experience, as its necessary base. 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 97 
 
 "Ah! but we are persons most of all!" 
 protests the reader. "This is personal 
 experience — it has the universal appeal!" 
 
 Take human life personally, then. Here 
 is a Human Being, a life, covering some 
 seventy years, involving the changing 
 growth of many faculties; the ever new 
 marvels of youth, the long working time of 
 middle life, the slow ripening of age. Here 
 is the human soul, in the human body, 
 Living. Out of this field of personal life, 
 with all of its emotions, processes, and 
 experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one 
 emotion, one process, one experience, mainly 
 of one sex. 
 
 The "love" of our stories is man's love of 
 woman. If any dare dispute this, and say 
 it treats equally of woman's love for man, I 
 answer, "Then why do the stories stop at 
 marriage?" 
 
 There is a current jest, revealing much, to 
 this effect: 
 
 The young wife complains that the hus- 
 band does not wait upon and woo her as he 
 did before marriage; to which he replies, 
 
98 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 "Why should I run after the street-car when 
 I've caught it?" 
 
 Woman's love for man, as currently 
 treated in fiction is largely a reflex; it 
 is the way he wants her to feel, expects 
 her to feel. Not a fair representation 
 of how she does feel. If "love" is to be 
 selected as the most important thing in life 
 to write about, then the mother's love should 
 be the principal subject. This is the main 
 stream, this is the general underlying, 
 world-lifting force. The "life-force," now 
 so glibly chattered about, finds its fullest 
 expression in motherhood; not in the emo- 
 tions of an assistant in the preliminary 
 stages. 
 
 What has literature, what has fiction to 
 offer concerning mother-love, or even con- 
 cerning father-love, as compared to this vast 
 volume of excitement about lover-love ? Why 
 is the search-light continually focused upon 
 a two or three years space of life "mid the 
 blank miles round about?" Why indeed, 
 except for the clear reason, that on a starkly 
 masculine basis this is his one period of over- 
 whelming interest and excitement. 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 99 
 
 If the beehive produced literature, the 
 bee's fiction would be rich and broad, full 
 of the complex tasks of comb-building and 
 filling, the care and feeding of the young, 
 the guardian-service of the queen; and far 
 beyond that it would spread to the blue glory 
 of the summer sky, the fresh winds, the end- 
 less beauty and sweetness of a thousand 
 thousand flowers. It would treat of the 
 vast fecundity of motherhood, the educative 
 and selective processes of the group- 
 mothers, and the passion of loyalty, of 
 social service, which holds the hive together. 
 
 But if the drones wrote fiction, it would 
 have no subject matter save the feasting, of 
 many ; and the nuptial flight, of one. 
 
 To the male, as such, this mating instinct 
 is frankly the major interest of life; even the 
 belligerent instincts are second to it. To the 
 male, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a 
 passing interest. In nature's economy, his 
 is but a temporary devotion, hers the slow 
 processes of life's fulfillment. 
 
 In humanity we have long since, not out- 
 grown, but overgrown, this stage of feeling. 
 In Human Parentage even the mother's 
 
100 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 share begins to pale beside that ever-grow- 
 ing Social love and care, which guards and 
 guides the children of to-day. 
 
 The art of literature in this main form of 
 fiction is far too great a thing to be wholly 
 governed by one dominant note. As life 
 widened and intensified, the artist, if great 
 enough, has transcended sex; and in the 
 mightier works of the real masters, we find 
 fiction treating of life, life in general, in all 
 its complex relationships, and refusing to be 
 held longer to the rigid canons of an andro- 
 centric past. 
 
 That was the power of Balzac — he took in 
 more than this one field. That was the 
 universal appeal of Dickens; he wrote of 
 people, all kinds of people, doing all kinds 
 of things. As you recall with pleasure some 
 preferred novel of this general favorite, you 
 find yourself looking narrowly for the "love 
 story" in it. It is there — for it is part of 
 life; but it does not dominate the whole 
 scene — any more than it does in life. 
 
 The thought of the world is made and 
 handed out to us in the main. The makers 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 101 
 
 of books are the makers of thoughts and 
 feelings for the people in general. Fiction 
 is the most popular form in which this world- 
 food is taken. If it were true, it would teach 
 us life easily, swiftly, truly; teach not by 
 preaching but by truly re-presenting; and 
 we should grow up becoming acquainted 
 with a far wider range of life in books than 
 could even be ours in person. Then meeting 
 life in reality we should be wise — and not be 
 disappointed. 
 
 As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped 
 and dyed and flavored all one way. A 
 young man faces life — the seventy year 
 stretch, remember, and is given book upon 
 book wherein one set of feelings is contin- 
 ually vocalized and overestimated. He reads 
 forever of love, good love and bad love, 
 natural and unnatural, legitimate and ille- 
 gitimate; with the unavoidable inference that 
 there is nothing else going on. 
 
 If he is a healthy young man he breaks 
 loose from the whole thing, despises "love 
 stories" and takes up life as he finds it. But 
 what impression he does receive from fiction 
 is a false one, and he suffers without know- 
 
102 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 ing it from lack of the truer, broader views 
 of life it failed to give him. 
 
 A young woman faces life — the seventy 
 year stretch remember; and is given the 
 same books — with restrictions. Remember 
 the remark of Rochefoucauld, "There are 
 thirty good stories in the world and twenty- 
 nine cannot be told to women." There is a 
 certain broad field of literature so grossly 
 androcentric that for very shame men have 
 tried to keep it to themselves. But in a 
 milder form, the spades all named teaspoons, 
 or at the worst appearing as trowels — the 
 young woman is given the same fiction. 
 Love and love and love — from "first sight" 
 to marriage. There it stops — just the flut- 
 tering ribbon of announcement — "and lived 
 happily ever after." 
 
 Is that kind of fiction any sort of picture 
 of a woman's life? Fiction, under our 
 androcentric culture, has not given any true 
 picture of woman's life, very little of human 
 life, and a disproportioned section of man's 
 life. 
 
 As we daily grow more human, both of 
 us, this noble art is changing for the better 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 103 
 
 so fast that a short lifetime can mark the 
 growth. New fields are opening and new 
 laborers are working in them. But it is no 
 swift and easy matter to disabuse the race 
 mind from attitudes and habits inculcated 
 for a thousand years. What we have been 
 fed upon so long we are well used to, what 
 we are used to we like, what we like we think 
 is good and proper. 
 
 The widening demand for broader, truer 
 fiction is disputed by the slow racial mind; 
 and opposed by the marketers of literature 
 on grounds of visible self-interest, as well as 
 lethargic conservatism. 
 
 It is difficult for men, heretofore the sole 
 producers and consumers of literature; and 
 for women, new to the field, and following 
 masculine canons because all the canons 
 were masculine; to stretch their minds to a 
 recognition of the change which is even now 
 upon us. 
 
 This one narrow field has been for so long 
 overworked, our minds are so filled with 
 heroes and heroes continually repeating the 
 one-act play, that when a book like David 
 Harum is offered the publishers refuse it 
 
104 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 repeatedly, and finally insist on a "heart 
 interest" being injected by force. 
 
 Did anyone read David Harum for that 
 heart interest ? Does anyone remember that 
 heart interest? Has humanity no interests 
 but those of the heart ? 
 
 Robert Ellesmere was a popular book — 
 but not because of its heart interest. 
 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin appealed to the entire 
 world, more widely than any work of fiction 
 that was ever written; but if anybody fell in 
 love and married in it they have been 
 forgotten. There was plenty of love in that 
 book, love of family, love of friends, love of 
 master for servant and servant for master; 
 love of mother for child; love of married 
 people for each other ; love of humanity and 
 love of God. 
 
 It was extremely popular. Some say it 
 was not literature. That opinion will live, 
 like the name of Empedocles. 
 
 The art of fiction is being re-born in these 
 days. Life is discovered to be longer, wider, 
 deeper, richer, than these monotonous 
 players of one tune would have us believe. 
 
 The humanizing of woman of itself opens 
 
MASCULINE LITERATURE 105 
 
 five distinctly fresh fields of fiction: First, 
 the position of the young woman who is 
 called upon to give up her "career" — her 
 humanness — for marriage, and who objects 
 to it. Second, the middle-aged woman who 
 at last discovers that her discontent is social 
 starvation — that it is not more love that she 
 wants, but more business in life: Third, the 
 inter-relation of women with women — a 
 thing we could never write about before 
 because we never had it before: except in 
 harems and convents: Fourth, the inter- 
 action between mothers and children; this 
 not the eternal "mother and child," wherein 
 the child is always a baby, but the long 
 drama of personal relationship ; the love and 
 hope, the patience and power, the lasting 
 joy and triumph, the slow eating disap- 
 pointment which must never be owned to a 
 living soul — here are grounds for novels 
 that a million mothers and many million 
 children would eagerly read : Fifth, the new 
 attitude of the full-grown woman, who faces 
 the demands of love with the high standards 
 of conscious motherhood. 
 
 There are other fields, broad and bril- 
 
106 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 liantly promising, but this chapter is meant 
 merely to show that our one-sided culture 
 has, in this art, most disproportionately 
 overestimated the dominant instincts of the 
 male — Love and War — an offense against 
 art and truth, and an injury to life. 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 107 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 GAMES AND SPORTS 
 
 ONE of the sharpest distinctions 
 both between the essential char- 
 acters and the artificial posi- 
 tions of men and women, is in the matter of 
 games and sports. By far the greater pro- 
 portion of them are essentially masculine, 
 and as such alien to women; while from 
 those which are humanly interesting, women 
 have been largely debarred by their arbi- 
 trary restrictions. 
 
 The play instinct is common to girls and 
 boys alike; and endures in some measure 
 throughout life. As other young animals 
 express their abounding energies in capri- 
 cious activities similar to those followed in 
 the business of living, so small children 
 gambol, physically, like lambs and kids; and 
 as the young of higher kinds of animals 
 
108 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 imitate in their play the more complex 
 activities of their elders, so do children 
 imitate whatever activities they see about 
 them. In this field of playing there is no 
 sex. 
 
 Similarly in adult life healthy and happy 
 persons, men and women, naturally express 
 surplus energy in various forms of sport. 
 We have here one of the most distinctively 
 human manifestations. The great accumu- 
 lation of social energy, and the necessary 
 limitations of any one kind of work, leave a 
 human being tired of one form of action, yet 
 still uneasy for lack of full expression; and 
 this social need has been met by our great 
 safety valve of games and sports. 
 
 In a society of either sex, or in a society 
 without sex, there would still be both 
 pleasure and use in games; they are vitally 
 essential to human life. In a society of two 
 sexes, wherein one has dictated all the terms 
 of life, and the other has been confined to an 
 extremely limited fraction of human living, 
 we may look to see this great field of enjoy- 
 ment as disproportionately divided. 
 
 It is not only that we have reduced the 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 109 
 
 play impulse in women by restricting them 
 to one set of occupations, and over-taxing 
 their energies with mother-work and house- 
 work combined; and not only that, by our 
 androcentric conventions we further restrict 
 their amusements; but we begin in infancy, 
 and forcibly differentiate their toys and 
 methods of play long before any natural 
 distinction would appear. 
 
 Take that universal joy the doll, or 
 puppet, as an instance. A small imitation 
 of a large known object carries delight to 
 the heart of a child of either sex. The 
 worsted cat, the wooden horse, the little 
 wagon, the tin soldier, the wax doll, the toy 
 village, the "Noah's Ark," the omnipresent 
 "Teddy Bear," any and every small model 
 of a real thing is a delight to the young 
 human being. Of all things the puppet is 
 the most intimate, the little image of another 
 human being to play with. The fancy of 
 the child, making endless combinations with 
 these visible types, plays as freely as a kitten 
 in the leaves; or gravely carries out some 
 observed forms of life, as the kitten imitates 
 its mother's hunting 
 
110 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 So far all is natural and human. 
 
 Now see our attitude toward child's play 
 — under a masculine culture. Regarding 
 women only as a sex, and that sex as mani- 
 fest from infancy, we make and buy for our 
 little girls toys suitable to this view. Being 
 females — which means mothers, we must 
 needs provide them with babies before they 
 cease to be babies themselves ; and we expect 
 their play to consist in an imitation of 
 maternal cares. The doll, the puppet, which 
 interests all children, we have rendered as 
 an eternal baby; and we foist them upon our 
 girl children by ceaseless millions. 
 
 The doll, as such, is dear to the little boy 
 as well as the girl, but not as a baby. He 
 likes his jumping- jack, his worsted Sambo, 
 often a genuine rag-doll; but he is discour- 
 aged and ridiculed in this. We do not 
 expect the little boy to manifest a father's 
 love and care for an imitation child — but 
 we do expect the little girl to show maternal 
 feelings for her imitation baby. It has not 
 yet occurred to us that this is monstrous. 
 
 Little children should not be expected to 
 show, in painful precocity, feelings which 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 111 
 
 ought never to be experienced till they come 
 at the proper age. Our kittens play at cat- 
 sports, little Tom and Tabby together; but 
 little Tabby does not play she is a mother! 
 
 Beyond the continuous dolls and their 
 continuous dressing, we provide for our 
 little girls tea sets and kitchen sets, 
 doll's houses, little workboxes — the imita- 
 tion tools of their narrow trades. For 
 the boy there is a larger choice. We 
 make for them not only the essentially 
 masculine toys of combat — all the enginery 
 of mimic war ; but also the models of human 
 things, like boats, railroads, wagons. For 
 them, too, are the comprehensive toys of the 
 centuries, the kite, the top, the ball. As the 
 boy gets old enough to play the games that 
 require skill, he enters the world-lists, and 
 the little sister, left inside, with her ever- 
 lasting dolls, learns that she is "only a girl," 
 and "mustn't play with boys — boys are 
 so rough!" She has her doll and her tea set. 
 She "plays house." If very active she may 
 jump rope, in solitary enthusiasm, or in 
 combination of from two to four. Her 
 brother is playing games. From this time 
 
112 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 on he plays the games of the world. The 
 "sporting page" should be called "the Man's 
 Page" as that array of recipes, fashions and 
 cheap advice is called "the Woman's Page." 
 
 One of the immediate educational advan- 
 tages of the boy's position is that he learns 
 "team work." This is not a masculine 
 characteristic, it is a human one; a social 
 power. Women are equally capable of it 
 by nature; but not by education. Tending 
 one's imitation baby is not team-work; nor 
 is playing house. The little girl is kept 
 forever within the limitations of her mother's 
 "sphere" of action; while the boy learns life, 
 and fancies that new growth is due to his 
 superior sex. 
 
 Now there are certain essential distinc- 
 tions in the sexes, which would manifest 
 themselves to some degree even in normally 
 reared children; as for instance the little 
 male would be more given to fighting and 
 destroying; the little female more to caring 
 for and constructing things. 
 
 "Boys are so destructive!" we say with 
 modest pride — as if it was in some way a 
 credit to them. But early youth is not the 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 113 
 
 time to display sex distinction; and they 
 should be discouraged rather than approved. 
 
 The games of the world, now the games 
 of men, easily fall into two broad classes — 
 games of skill and games of chance. 
 
 The interest and pleasure in the latter is 
 purely human, and as such is shared by the 
 two sexes even now. Women, in the 
 innocent beginnings or the vicious extremes 
 of this line of amusement, make as wild 
 gamblers as men. At the races, at the 
 roulette wheel, at the bridge table, this is 
 clearly seen. 
 
 In games of skill we have a different 
 showing. Most of these are developed by 
 and for men; but when they are allowed, 
 women take part in them with interest and 
 success. In card games, in chess, checkers, 
 and the like, in croquet and tennis, they play, 
 and play well if well-trained. Where they 
 fall short in so many games, and are so 
 wholly excluded in others, is not for lack of 
 human capacity, but for lack of masculinity. 
 Most games are male. In their element of 
 desire to win, to get the prize, they are male : 
 and in their universal attitude of competi- 
 
114 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 tion they are male, the basic spirit of desire 
 and of combat working out through subtle 
 modern forms. 
 
 There is something inherently masculine 
 also in the universal dominance of the pro- 
 jectile in their games. The ball is the one 
 unescapable instrument of sport. From the 
 snapped marble of infancy to the flying 
 missile of the bat, this form endures. To 
 send something forth with violence ; to throw 
 it, bat it, kick it, shoot it; this impulse seems 
 to date back to one of the twin forces of the 
 universe — the centrifugal and centripetal 
 energies between which swing the planets. 
 
 The basic feminine impulse is to gather, 
 to put together, to construct; the basic 
 masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate, 
 to destroy. It seems to give pleasure to a 
 man to bang something and drive it from 
 him; the harder he hits it and the farther it 
 goes the better pleased he is. 
 
 Games of this sort will never appeal to 
 women. They are not wrong; not neces- 
 sarily evil in their place; our mistake is in 
 considering them as human, whereas they 
 are only masculine. 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 115 
 
 Play, in the childish sense is an expression 
 of previous habit; and to be studied in that 
 light. Play in the educational sense should 
 be encouraged or discouraged to develop de- 
 sired characteristics. This we know, and 
 practice; only we do it under androcentric 
 cannons; confining the girl to the narrow 
 range we consider proper for women, and 
 assisting the boy to cover life with the ex- 
 pression of masculinity, when we should be 
 helping both to a more human development. 
 
 Our settled conviction that men are people 
 — the people, and that masculine qualities 
 are the main desideratum in life, is what 
 keeps up this false estimate of the value of 
 our present games. Advocates of football, 
 for instance, proudly claim that it fits a man 
 for life. Life — from the wholly male point 
 of view — is a battle, with a prize. To want 
 something beyond measure, and to fight to 
 get — that is the simple proposition. This 
 view of life finds its most naive expression 
 in predatory warfare; and still tends to 
 make predatory warfare of the later and 
 more human processes of industry. Be- 
 cause they see life in this way they imagine 
 
116 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 that skill and practice in the art of fighting, 
 especially in collective fighting, is so valu- 
 able in our modern life. This is an archaism 
 which would be laughable if it were not so 
 dangerous in its effects. 
 
 The valuable processes to-day are those 
 of invention, discovery, all grades of in- 
 dustry, and, most especially needed, the 
 capacity for honest service and administra- 
 tion of our immense advantages. These are 
 not learned on the football field. 
 
 This spirit of desire and combat may be 
 seen further in all parts of this great subject. 
 It has developed into a cult of sportsman- 
 ship ; so universally accepted among men as 
 of superlative merits as to quite blind them 
 to other standards of judgment. 
 
 In the Cook-Peary controversy of 1909, 
 this canon was made manifest. Here, one 
 man had spent a lifetime in trying to ac- 
 complishing something; and at the eleventh 
 hour succeeded. Then, coming out in the 
 rich triumph long deferred, he finds another 
 man, of character well known to him, im- 
 pudently and falsely claiming that he had 
 done it first. Mr. Peary expressed himself, 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 117 
 
 quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard 
 to the effrontery and falsity of this claim — 
 and all the country rose up and denounced 
 him as "unsportsmanlike!" 
 
 Sport and the canons of sport are so dom- 
 inant in the masculine mind that what they 
 considered a deviation from these standards 
 was of far more importance than the ques- 
 tion of fact involved; to say nothing of the 
 moral obliquity of one lying to the whole 
 world, for money; and that at the cost of 
 another's hard-won triumph. 
 
 If women had condemned the conduct of 
 one or the other as "not good housewifery," 
 this would have been considered a most 
 puerile comment. But to be "unsportsman- 
 like" is the unpardonable sin. 
 
 Owing to our warped standards we glar- 
 ingly misjudge the attitude of the two 
 sexes in regard to their amusements. Of 
 late years more women than ever before 
 have taken to playing cards; and some, un- 
 fortunately, play for money. A steady 
 stream of comment and blame follows upon 
 this. The amount of card playing among 
 men — and the amount of money lost and 
 
118 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 won, does not produce an equivalent 
 comment. 
 
 Quite aside from this one field of dissipa- 
 tion, look at the share of life, of time, of 
 strength, of money, given by men to their 
 wide range of recreation. The primitive 
 satisfaction of hunting and fishing they 
 maintain at enormous expense. This is the 
 indulgence of a most rudimentary impulse; 
 pre-social and largely pre-human, of no 
 service save as it affects bodily health, and 
 of a most deterring influence on real human 
 development. Where hunting and fishing 
 is of real human service, done as a means of 
 livelihood, it is looked down upon like any 
 other industry; it is no longer "sport." 
 
 The human being kills to eat, or to sell 
 and eat from the returns; he kills for the 
 creature's hide or tusks, for use of some 
 sort, or to protect his crops from vermin, 
 his flocks from depredation; but the sports- 
 man kills for the gratification of a primeval 
 instinct, and under rules of an arbitrary 
 cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird, 
 beast or fish that is hard to catch, that 
 requires some skill to slay; that will give 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 119 
 
 him not mere meat and bones, but "the 
 pleasure of the chase." 
 
 The pleasure of the chase is a very real 
 one. It is exemplified, in its broad sense in 
 children's play. The running and catching 
 games, the hiding and finding games, are 
 always attractive to our infancy, as they are 
 to that of cubs and kittens. But the long 
 continuance of this indulgence among 
 mature civilized beings is due to their 
 masculinity. That group of associated sex 
 instincts, which in the woman prompts to 
 the patient service and fierce defence of the 
 little child, in the man has its deepest root 
 in seeking, pursuing and catching. To hunt 
 is more than a means of obtaining food, in 
 his long ancestry; it is to follow at any cost, 
 to seek through all difficulties, to struggle 
 for and secure the central prize of his being 
 — a mate. 
 
 His "protective instincts" are far later 
 and more superficial. To support and care 
 for his wife, his children, is a recent habit, 
 in plain sight historically; but "the pleasure 
 of the chase" is older than that. We should 
 remember that associate habits and impulses 
 
120 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 last for ages upon ages in living forms; as 
 in the tree-climbing instincts of our earliest 
 years, of simian origin; and the love of 
 water, which dates hack through unmeas- 
 ured time. Where for millions of years the 
 strongest pleasure a given organism is fitted 
 for, is obtained by a certain group of 
 activities, those activities will continue to 
 give pleasure long after their earlier use is 
 gone. 
 
 This is why men enjoy "the ardor of 
 pursuit" far more than women. It is an 
 essentially masculine ardor. To come easily 
 by what he wants does not satisfy him. He 
 wants to want it. He wants to hunt it, seek 
 it, chase it, catch it. He wants it to be 
 "game." He is by virtue of his sex a 
 sportsman. 
 
 There is no reason why these special 
 instincts should not be gratified so long as 
 it does no harm to the more important social 
 processes; but it is distinctly desirable that 
 we should understand their nature. The 
 reason why we have the present over- 
 whelming mass of "sporting events," from 
 the ball game to the prize fight, is be- 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 121 
 
 cause our civilization is so overwhelmingly 
 masculine. We shall criticize them more 
 justly when we see that all this mass of 
 indulgence is in the first place a form of 
 sex-expression, and in the second place a 
 survival of instincts older than the oldest 
 savagery. 
 
 Besides our games and sports we have 
 a large field of "amusements" also worth 
 examining. We not only enjoy doing 
 things, but we enjoy seeing them done 
 by others. In these highly specialized days 
 most of our amusement consists in paying 
 two dollars to sit three hours and see other 
 people do tilings. 
 
 This in its largest sense is wholly human. 
 We, as social creatures, can enjoy a 
 thousand forms of expression quite beyond 
 the personal. The birds must each sing his 
 own song; the crickets chirp in millionfold 
 performance ; but the human beings feels the 
 deep thrill of joy in their special singers, 
 actors, dancers, as well as in their own 
 personal attempts. That we should find 
 pleasure in watching one another is 
 humanly natural, but what it is we watch,, 
 
122 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 the kind of pleasure and the kind of per- 
 formance, opens a wide field of choice. 
 
 We know, for instance, something of the 
 crude excesses of aboriginal Australian 
 dances; we know more of the gross license 
 of old Rome; we know the breadth of the 
 jokes in medieval times, and the childish 
 brutality of the bull-ring and the cockpit. 
 We know, in a word, that amusements vary ; 
 that they form a ready gauge of character 
 and culture; that they have a strong educa- 
 tional influence for good or bad. What we 
 have not hitherto observed is the predomi- 
 nant masculine influence on our amusements. 
 If we recall once more the statement with 
 regard to entertaining anecdotes, "There 
 are thirty good stories in the world, and 
 twenty-nine of them cannot be told to 
 women," we get a glaring sidelight on the 
 masculine specialization in jokes. 
 
 "Women have no sense of humor" has 
 been frequently said, when "Women have 
 not a masculine sense of humor" would be 
 truer. If women had thirty "good stories" 
 twenty-nine of which could not be told to 
 men, it is possible that men, if they heard 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 123 
 
 some of the twenty-nine, would not find 
 them funny. The over-weight of one sex has 
 told in our amusements as everywhere else. 
 Because men are further developed in 
 humanity than women are as yet, they have 
 built and organized great places of amuse- 
 ment; because they carried into their 
 humanity their unchecked masculinity, they 
 have made these amusements to correspond. 
 Dramatic expression, is in its true sense, not 
 only a human distinction, but one of our 
 noblest arts. It is allied with the highest 
 emotions; is religious, educational, patriotic, 
 covering the whole range of human feeling. 
 Through it we should be able continually to 
 express, in audible, visible forms, alive and 
 moving, whatever phase of life we most 
 enjoyed or wished to see. There was a time 
 when the drama led life; lifted, taught, 
 inspired, enlightened. Now its main func- 
 tion is to amuse. Under the demand for 
 amusement, it has cheapened and coarsened, 
 and now the thousand vaudeville and pic- 
 ture shows give us the broken fragments of 
 a degraded art of which our one main 
 demand is that it shall make us laugh. 
 
124 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 There are many causes at work here; and 
 while this study seeks to show in various 
 fields one cause, it does not claim that cause 
 is the only one. Our economic conditions 
 have enormous weight upon our amuse- 
 ments, as on all other human phenomena; 
 but even under economic pressure the reac- 
 tions of men and women are often dissimilar. 
 Tired men and women both need amuse- 
 ment, the relaxation and restful change of 
 irresponsible gayety. The great majority 
 of women, who work longer hours than any 
 other class, need it desperately and never get 
 it. Amusement, entertainment, recreation, 
 should be open to us all, enjoyed by all. This 
 is a human need, and not a distinction of 
 either sex. Like most human things it is 
 not only largely monopolized by men, but 
 masculized throughout. Many forms of 
 amusement are for men only; more for men 
 mostly ; all are for men if they choose to go. 
 
 The entrance of women upon the stage, 
 and their increased attendance at theatres 
 has somewhat modified the nature of the 
 performance; even the "refined vaudeville" 
 now begins to show the influence of women. 
 
GAMES AND SPORTS 125 
 
 It would be no great advantage to have this 
 department of human life feminized; the 
 improvement desired is to have it less mascu- 
 lized; to reduce the excessive influence of 
 one, and to bring out those broad human 
 interests and pleasures which men and 
 women can equally participate in and enjoy. 
 
126 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ETHICS AND RELIGION 
 
 THE laws of physics were at work 
 before we were on earth, and con- 
 tinued to work on us long before 
 we had intelligence enough to perceive, much 
 less understand, them. Our proven knowl- 
 edge of these processes constitutes "the 
 science of physics"; but the laws were there 
 before the science. 
 
 Physics is the science of material relation, 
 how things and natural forces work with and 
 on one another. Ethics is the science of 
 social relation, how persons and social forces 
 work with and on one another. 
 
 Ethics is to the human world what physics 
 is to the material world; ignorance of ethics 
 leaves us in the same helpless position in 
 regard to one another that ignorance of 
 
ETHICS AND RELIGION 127 
 
 physics left us in regard to earth, air, fire 
 and water. 
 
 To be sure, people lived and died and 
 gradually improved, while yet ignorant of 
 the physical sciences ; they developed a rough 
 "rule of thumb" method, as animals do, and 
 used great forces without understanding 
 them. But their lives were safer and their 
 improvement more rapid as they learned 
 more, and began to make servants of the 
 forces which had been their masters. 
 
 We have progressed, lamely enough, with 
 terrible loss and suffering, from stark 
 savagery to our present degree of civiliza- 
 tion; we shall go on more safely and swiftly 
 when we learn more of the science of ethics. 
 
 Let us note first that while the underlying 
 laws of ethics remain steady and reliable, 
 human notions of them have varied widely 
 and still do so. In different races, ages, 
 classes, sexes, different views of ethics 
 obtain ; the conduct of the people is modified 
 by their views, and their prosperity is 
 modified by their conduct. 
 
 Primitive man became very soon aware 
 that conduct was of importance. As 
 
128 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 consciousness increased, with the power to 
 modify action from within, instead of help- 
 lessly reacting to stimuli from without, there 
 arose the crude first codes of ethics, the 
 "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" of the 
 blundering savage. It was mostly "Thou 
 shalt not." Inhibition, the checking of an 
 impulse proven disadvantageous, was an 
 earlier and easier form of action than the 
 later human power to consciously decide on 
 and follow a course of action with no 
 stimulus but one's own will. 
 
 Primitive ethics consists mostly of tabus 
 — the things that are forbidden; and all our 
 dim notions of ethics to this day, as well as 
 most of our religions, deal mainly with 
 forbidding. 
 
 This is almost the whole of our nursery 
 government, to an extent shown by the well- 
 worn tale of the child who said her name 
 was "Mary." "Mary what?" they asked 
 her. And she answered, "Mary Don't." It 
 is also the main body of our legal systems — a 
 complex mass of prohibitions and preven- 
 tions. And even in manners and conven- 
 tions, the things one should not do far 
 
ETHICS AND RELIGION 129 
 
 outnumber the things one should. A general 
 policy of negation colors our conceptions of 
 ethics and religion. 
 
 When the positive side began to be 
 developed, it was at first in purely arbitrary 
 and artificial form. The followers of a given 
 religion were required to go through certain 
 motions, as prostrating themselves, kneeling, 
 and the like; they were required to bring 
 tribute to the gods and their priests, sacri- 
 fices, tithes, oblations; they were set little 
 special performances to go through at given 
 times, the range of things forbidden was 
 broad; the range of tilings commanded was 
 narrow. The Christian religion, practically 
 interpreted, requires a fuller "change of 
 heart" and change of life than any preced- 
 ing it; which may account at once for its 
 wide appeal to enlighten peoples, and to its 
 scarcity of application. 
 
 Again, in surveying the field, it is seen 
 that as our grasp of ethical values widened, 
 as we called more and more acts and tend- 
 encies "right" and "wrong," we have shown 
 astonishing fluctuations and vagaries in our 
 
130 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 judgment. Not only in our religions, which 
 have necessarily upheld each its own set of 
 prescribed actions as most "right," and its 
 own special prohibitions as most "wrong;" 
 but in our beliefs about ethics and our real 
 conduct, we have varied absurdly. 
 
 Take, for instance, the ethical concept 
 among "gentlemen" a century or so since, 
 which put the paying of one's gambling 
 debts as a well-nigh sacred duty, and the 
 paying of a tradesman who had fed and 
 clothed one as a quite negligible matter. If 
 the process of gambling was of social service, 
 and the furnishing of food and clothes was 
 not, this might be good ethics; but as the 
 contrary is true, we have to account for this 
 peculiar view on other grounds. 
 
 Again, where in Japan a girl, to maintain 
 her parents, is justified in leading a life of 
 shame, we have a peculiar ethical standard 
 difficult for Western minds to appreciate. 
 Yet in such an instance as is described in 
 "Auld Robin Gray," we see precisely the 
 same code; the girl, to benefit her parents, 
 marries a rich old man she does not love — 
 which is to lead a life of shame. The ethical 
 
ETHICS AND RELIGION 131 
 
 view which justifies this, puts the benefit of 
 parents above the benefit of children, robs 
 the daughter of happiness and motherhood, 
 injures posterity to assist ancestors. 
 
 This is one of the products of that very 
 early religion, ancestor worship ; and here we 
 lay a finger on a distinctly masculine 
 influence. 
 
 We know little of ethical values during 
 the matriarchate ; whatever they were, they 
 must have depended for sanction on a cult 
 of promiscuous but efficient maternity. Our 
 recorded history begins in the patriarchal 
 period, and it is its ethics alone which we 
 know. 
 
 The mother instinct, throughout nature, 
 is one of unmixed devotion, of love and 
 service, care and defense, with no self- 
 interest. The animal father, in such cases 
 as he is of service to the young, assists the 
 mother in her work in similar fashion. But 
 the human father in the family with the male 
 head soon made that family an instrument 
 of desire, and combat, and self-expression, 
 following the essentially masculine impulses. 
 The children were his, and, if males, valuable 
 
132 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 to serve and glorify him. In his dominance 
 over servile women and helpless children, 
 free rein was given to the growth of pride 
 and the exercise of irresponsible tyranny. 
 To these feelings, developed without check 
 for thousands of years, and to the mental 
 habits resultant, it is easy to trace much of 
 the bias of our early ethical concepts. 
 
 Perhaps it is worth while to repeat here 
 that the effort of this book is by no means 
 to attribute a wholly evil influence to men, 
 and a wholly good one to women; it is not 
 even claimed that a purely feminine culture 
 would have advanced the world more suc- 
 cessfully. It does claim that the influence 
 of the two together is better than that of 
 either one alone; and in special to point out 
 what special kind of injury is due to the 
 exclusive influence of one sex heretofore. 
 
 We have to-day reached a degree of 
 human development where both men and 
 women are capable of seeing over and across 
 the distinctions of sex, and mutually work- 
 ing for the advancement of the world. Our 
 progress is, however, seriously impeded by 
 what we may call the masculine tradition, 
 
ETHICS AND RELIGION 133 
 
 the unconscious dominance of a race habit 
 based on this long androcentric period; and 
 it is well worth while, in the interests of both 
 sexes, to show the mischievous effects of the 
 predominance of one. 
 
 We have in our cities not only a "double 
 standard" in one special line, but in nearly 
 all. Man, as a sex, has quite naturally 
 deified his own qualities rather than those 
 of his opposite. In his codes of manners, of 
 morals, of laws, in his early concepts of God, 
 his ancient religions, we see masculinity 
 written large on every side. Confining 
 women wholly to their feminine functions, 
 he has required of them only what he called 
 feminine virtues; and the one virtue he has 
 demanded, to the complete overshadowing 
 of all others, is measured by wholly mascu- 
 line requirements. 
 
 In the interests of health and happiness, 
 monogamous marriage proves its superior- 
 ity in our race as it has in others. It is essen- 
 tial to the best growth of humanity that we 
 practice the virtue of chastity ; it is a human 
 virtue, not a feminine one. But in the mas- 
 culine hands this virtue was enforced upon 
 
134 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 women under penalties of hideous cruelty, 
 and quite ignored by men. Masculine ethics, 
 colored by masculine instincts, always domi- 
 nated by sex, has at once recognized the 
 value of chastity in the woman, which is 
 right; punished its absence unfairly, which 
 is wrong; and then reversed the whole 
 matter when applied to men, which is ridicu- 
 lous. 
 
 Ethical laws are laws — not idle notions. 
 Chastity is a virtue because it promotes 
 human welfare — not because men happen to 
 prize it in women and ignore it themselves. 
 The underlying reason for the whole thing 
 is the benefit of the child; and to that end 
 a pure and noble fatherhood is requisite, as 
 well as such a motherhood. Under the limi- 
 tations of a too masculine ethics, we have 
 developed on this one line social conditions 
 which would be absurdly funny if they were 
 not so horrible. 
 
 Religion, be it noticed, does not bear out 
 this attitude. The immense human need of 
 religion, the noble human character of the 
 great religious teachers, has always set its 
 
ETHICS AND RELIGION 135 
 
 standards, when first established, ahead of 
 human conduct. 
 
 Some there are, men of learning and 
 authority, who hold that the deadening im- 
 mobility of our religions, their resistance 
 to progress and relentless preservation of 
 primitive ideals, is due to the conservatism 
 of women. Men, they say, are progressive 
 by nature ; women are conservative. Women 
 are more religious than men, and so preserve 
 old religious forms unchanged after men 
 have outgrown them. 
 
 If we saw women in absolute freedom, 
 with a separate religion devised by women, 
 practiced by women, and remaining un- 
 changed through the centuries; while men, 
 on the other hand, bounded bravely for- 
 ward, making new ones as fast as they were 
 needed, this belief might be maintained. 
 But what do we see? All the old religions 
 made by men, and forced on the women 
 whether they liked it or not. Often women 
 not even considered as part of the scheme — 
 denied souls — given a much lower place 
 in the system — going from the service 
 of their father's goods to the service 
 
136 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 of their husbands — having none of their own. 
 We see religions which make practically no 
 place for women, as with the Moslem, as 
 rigidly bigoted and unchanging as any 
 other. 
 
 We see also this: that the wider and 
 deeper the religion, the more human, the 
 more it calls for practical application — as in 
 Christianity — the more it appeals to women. 
 Further, in the diverging sects of the 
 Christian religion, we find that its progres- 
 siveness is to be measured not by the num- 
 bers of its women adherents, but by their 
 relative freedom. The women of America, 
 who belong to a thousand sects, who follow 
 new ones with avidity, who even make them, 
 and who also leave them all as men do, are 
 women, as well as those of Spain, who 
 remain contented Romanists; but in Amer- 
 ica the status of women is higher. 
 
 The fact is this: a servile womanhood is 
 in a state of arrested development, and as 
 such does form a ground for the retention 
 of ancient ideas. But this is due to the con- 
 dition of servility, not to womanhood, that 
 women at present are the bulwark of the 
 
ETHICS AND RELIGION 137 
 
 older forms of our religions is due to the 
 action of two classes of men : the men of the 
 world, who keep women in their restricted 
 position, and the men of the church, who 
 take every advantage of the limitations of 
 women. When we have for the first time 
 in history a really civilized womanhood, we 
 can then judge better of its effect on 
 religion. 
 
 Meanwhile, we can see quite clearly the 
 effect of manhood. Keeping in mind those 
 basic masculine impulses — desire and com- 
 bat — we see them reflected from high heaven 
 in their religious concepts. Reward ! Some- 
 thing to want tremendously and struggle to 
 achieve ! This is a concept perfectly mascu- 
 line and most imperfectly religious. A 
 religion is partly explanation — a theory of 
 life; it is partly emotion — an attitude of 
 mind; it is partly action — a system of 
 morals. Man's special effect on this large 
 field of human development is clear. He 
 pictured his early gods as like to himself, 
 and they behaved in accordance with his 
 ideals. In the dimmest, oldest religions, 
 nearest the matriarchate, we find great god- 
 
138 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 desses — types of Motherhood, Mother-love, 
 Mother-care and Service. But under mas- 
 culine dominance, Isis and Ashteroth 
 dwindle away to an alluring Aphrodite — 
 not Womanhood — for the Child and the 
 World — but the incarnation of female at- 
 tractiveness for man. 
 
 As the idea of heaven developed in the 
 man's mind it became the Happy Hunting 
 Ground of the savage, the beery and gory 
 Valhalla of the Norseman, the vuluptuous, 
 many-houri-ed Paradise of the Mohamme- 
 dan. These are men's heavens all. Women 
 have never been so fond of hunting, beer or 
 blood ; and their houris would be of the other 
 kind. It may be said that the early Christian 
 idea of heaven is by no means planned for 
 men. That is true, and is perhaps the 
 reason why it has never had so compelling 
 an attraction for them. 
 
 Very early in his vague efforts towards 
 religious expression, man voiced his second 
 strongest instinct — that of combat. His 
 universe is always dual, always a scene of 
 combat. Born with that impulse, exercising 
 it continually, he naturally assumed it to be 
 
ETHICS AND RELIGION 139 
 
 the major process in life. It is not. 
 Growth is the major process. Combat 
 is a useful subsidiary process, chiefly valu- 
 able for its initial use, to transmit the 
 physical superiority of the victor. Psychic 
 and social advantages are not thus secured 
 or transmitted. 
 
 In no one particular is the androcentric 
 character of our common thought more 
 clearly shown than in the general deification 
 of what are now described as "conflict 
 stimuli." That which is true of the male 
 creature as such is assumed to be true of life 
 in general ; quite naturally, but by no means 
 correctly. To this universal masculine error 
 we may trace in the field of religion and 
 ethics the great devil theory, which has for 
 so long obscured our minds. A God with- 
 out an Adversary was inconceivable to the 
 masculine mind. From this basic miscon- 
 ception we find all our ideas of ethics dis- 
 torted; that which should have been treated 
 as a group of truths to be learned and habits 
 to be cultivated was treated in terms of com- 
 bat, and moral growth made an everlasting 
 battle. This combat theory we may follow 
 
140 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 later into our common notions of discipline, 
 government, law and punishment; here is it 
 enough to see its painful effects in this pri- 
 mary field of ethics and religion? 
 
 The third essential male trait of self-ex- 
 pression we may follow from its innocent 
 natural form in strutting cock or stamping 
 stag up to the characteristics we label vanity 
 and pride. The degradation of women in 
 forcing them to adopt masculine methods of 
 personal decoration as a means of livelihood, 
 has carried with the concomitant of personal 
 vanity ; but to this day and at their worst we 
 do not find in women the naive exultant 
 glow of pride which swells the bosom of the 
 men who march in procession with brass 
 bands, in full regalia of any sort, so that 
 it be gorgeous, exhibiting their glories to all. 
 
 It is this purely masculine spirit which has 
 given to our early concepts of Deity the un- 
 admirable qualities of boundless pride and 
 a thirst for constant praise and prostrate 
 admiration, characteristics certainly unbefit- 
 ting any noble idea of God. Desire, combat 
 and self-expression all have had their un- 
 avoidable influence on masculine religions. 
 
ETHICS AND RELIGION 141 
 
 What deified Maternity a purely feminine 
 culture might have put forth we do not 
 know, having had none such. Women are 
 generally credited with as much moral sense 
 as men, and as much religious instinct; but 
 so far it has had small power to modify our 
 prevailing creeds. 
 
 As a matter of fact, no special sex attri- 
 butes should have any weight in our ideas 
 of right and wrong. Ethics and religion are 
 distinctly human concerns ; they belong to us 
 as social factors, not as physical ones. As 
 we learn to recognize our humanness, and 
 to leave our sex characteristics where they 
 belong, we shall at last learn something 
 about ethics as a simple and practical 
 science, and see that religions grow as the 
 mind grows to formulate them. 
 
 If anyone seeks for a clear, simple, easily 
 grasped proof of our man-made ethics, it is 
 to be found in a popular proverb. Strug- 
 gling upward from beast and savage into 
 humanness, man has seen, reverenced, and 
 striven to attain various human virtues. 
 
 He was willing to check many primitive 
 impulses, to change many barbarous habits, 
 
142 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 to manifest newer, nobler powers. Much he 
 would concede to Humanness, but not his 
 sex — that was beyond the range of Ethics or 
 Religion. By the state of what he calls 
 "morals," and the laws he makes to regulate 
 them, by his attitude in courtship and in 
 marriage, and by the gross anomaly of mili- 
 tarism, in all its senseless waste of life and 
 wealth and joy, we may perceive this little 
 masculine exception: 
 
 "All's fair in love and war." 
 
EDUCATION 143 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 THE origin of education is maternal. 
 The mother animal is seen to teach 
 her young what she knows of life, 
 its gains and losses; and, whether consci- 
 ously done or not, this is education. In our 
 human life, education, even in its present 
 state, is the most important process. With- 
 out it we could not maintain ourselves, much 
 less dominate and improve conditions as we 
 do ; and when education is what it should be, 
 our power will increase far beyond present 
 hopes. 
 
 In lower animals, speaking generally, the 
 powers of the race must be lodged in each 
 individual. No gain of personal experience 
 is of avail to the others. No advantages 
 remain, save those physically transmitted. 
 The narrow limits of personal gain and per- 
 
144 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 sonal inheritance rigidly hem in sub-human 
 progress. With us, what one learns may be 
 taught to the others. Our life is social, col- 
 lective. Our gain is for all, and profits us 
 in proportion as we extend it to all. As the 
 human soul develops in us, we become able 
 to grasp more fully our common needs and 
 advantages; and with this growth has come 
 the extension of education to the people as 
 a whole. Social functions are developed 
 under natural laws, like physical ones, and 
 may be studied similarly. 
 
 In the evolution of this basic social func- 
 tion, what has been the effect of wholly mas- 
 culine influence? 
 
 The original process, instruction of indi- 
 vidual child by individual mother, has been 
 largely neglected in our man-made world. 
 That was considered as a subsidiary sex- 
 function of the woman, and as such, left to 
 her instinct. This is the main reason why 
 we show such great progress in education 
 for older children, and especially for youths, 
 and so little comparatively in that given to 
 younger ones. 
 
 We have had on the one side the natural 
 
EDUCATION 145 
 
 current of maternal education, with its first 
 assistant, the nursemaid, and its second, the 
 "dame-school"; and on the other the influ- 
 ence of the dominant class, organized in uni- 
 versity, college and public school, slowly 
 filtering downward. 
 
 Educational forces are many. The child 
 is born into certain conditions, physical 
 and psychic, and "educated" thereby. He 
 grows up into social, political and economic 
 conditions, and is further modified by them. 
 All these conditions, so far, have been of 
 androcentric character; but what we call 
 education as a special social process is what 
 the child is deliberately taught and sub- 
 jected to; and it is here we may see the 
 same dominant influence so clearly. 
 
 This conscious education was, for long, 
 given to boys alone, the girls being left to 
 maternal influence, each to learn what her 
 mother knew, and no more. This very clear 
 instance of the masculine theory is glaring 
 enough by itself to rest a case on. It shows 
 how absolute was the assumption that the 
 world was composed of men, and men alone 
 were to be fitted for it. Women were no 
 
146 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 part of the world, and needed no training 
 for its uses. As females they were born and 
 not made; as human beings they were only 
 servants, trained as such by their servant 
 mothers. 
 
 This system of education we are out- 
 growing more swiftly with each year. The 
 growing humanness of women, and its 
 recognition, is forcing an equal education 
 for boy and girl. When this demand was 
 first made, by women of unusual calibre, 
 and by men sufficiently human to overlook 
 sex-prejudice, how was it met? What was 
 the attitude of woman's "natural protector" 
 when she began to ask some share in human 
 life? 
 
 Under the universal assumption that men 
 alone were humanity, that the world was 
 masculine and for men only, the efforts of 
 the women were met as a deliberate attempt 
 to "unsex" themselves and become men. To 
 be a woman was to be ignorant, unedu- 
 cated ; to be wise, educated, was to be a man. 
 Women were not men, visibly; therefore 
 they could not be educated, and ought not 
 to want to be. 
 
EDUCATION 147 
 
 Under this androcentric prejudice, the 
 equal extension of education to women was 
 opposed at every step, and is still opposed 
 by many. Seeing in women only sex, and 
 not humanness, they would confine her 
 exclusively to feminine interests. This is 
 the masculine view, par excellence. In spite 
 of it, the human development of women, 
 which so splendidly characterizes our age, 
 has gone on ; and now both women's colleges 
 and those for both sexes offer "the higher 
 education" to our girls, as well as the lower 
 grades in school and kindergarten. 
 
 In the special professional training, the 
 same opposition was experienced, even more 
 rancorous and cruel. One would think that 
 on the entrance of a few straggling and 
 necessarily inferior feminine beginners into 
 a trade or profession, those in possession 
 would extend to them the right hand of 
 fellowship, as comrades, extra assistance as 
 beginners, and special courtesy as women. 
 
 The contrary occurred. Women were 
 barred out, discriminated against, taken 
 advantage of, as competitors ; and as women 
 they have had to meet special danger and 
 
148 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 offence instead of special courtesy. An 
 unforgetable instance of this lies in the at- 
 titude of medical colleges toward women 
 students. 
 
 The men, strong enough, one would think, 
 in numbers, in knowledge, in established 
 precedent, to be generous, opposed the new- 
 comers first with absolute refusal; then 
 when the patient, persistent applicants did 
 get inside, both students and teachers met 
 them not only with unkindness and unfair- 
 ness, but with a weapon ingeniously well 
 chosen, and most discreditable — namely, 
 obscenity. Grave professors, in lecture and 
 clinic, as well as grinning students, used 
 offensive language, and played offensive 
 tricks, to drive the women out — a most 
 androcentric performance. 
 
 Remember that the essential masculine 
 attitude is one of opposition, of combat; 
 his desire is obtained by first overcoming 
 a competitor; and then see how this domin- 
 ant masculinity stands out where it has no 
 possible use or benefit — in the field of educa- 
 tion. All along the line, man, long master 
 of a subject sex, fought every step of 
 
EDUCATION 149 
 
 woman toward mental equality. Neverthe- 
 less, since modern man has become human 
 enough to be just, he has at last let her have 
 a share in the advantages of education; and 
 she has proven her full power to appreciate 
 and use these advantages. 
 
 Then to-day rises a new cry against 
 "women in education." Here is Mr. Bar- 
 rett Wendell, of Harvard, solemnly claim- 
 ing that teaching women weakens the intel- 
 lect of the teacher, and every now and then 
 bursts out a frantic sputter of alarm over 
 the "feminization" of our schools. It is 
 true that the majority of teachers are now 
 women. It is true that they do have an 
 influence on growing children. It would 
 even seem to be true that that is largely 
 what women are for. 
 
 But the male assumes his influence to be 
 normal, human, and the female influence as 
 wholly a matter of sex; therefore, where 
 women teach boys, the boys become "effemi- 
 nate" — a grievious fall. When men teach 
 
 girls, do the girls become ? Here again 
 
 we lack the analogue. Never has it occurred 
 to the androcentric mind to conceive of 
 
150 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 such a thing as being too masculine. There 
 is no such word! It is odd to notice that 
 which ever way the woman is placed, she is 
 supposed to exert this degrading influence; 
 if the teacher, she effeminizes her pupils; if 
 the pupil, she effeminizes her teachers. 
 
 Now let us shake ourselves free, if only 
 for a moment, from the androcentric habit 
 of mind. 
 
 As a matter of sex, the female is the more 
 important. Her share of the processes 
 which sex distinction serves is by far greater. 
 To be feminine — if one were nothing else, 
 is a far more extensive and dignified office 
 than to be masculine — and nothing else. 
 
 But as a matter of humanity the male of 
 our species is at present far ahead of the 
 female. By this superior humanness, his 
 knowledge, his skill, his experience, his 
 organization and specialization, he makes 
 and manages the world. All this is human, 
 not male. All this is open to the woman as 
 the man by nature, but has been denied her 
 during our androcentric culture. 
 
 But even if, in a purely human process, 
 
EDUCATION 151 
 
 such as education, she does bring her special 
 feminine characteristics to bear, what are 
 they, and what are the results? 
 
 We can see the masculine influence every- 
 where still dominant and superior. There 
 is the first spur, Desire, the base of the 
 reward system, the incentive of self-interest, 
 the attitude which says, "Why should I 
 make an effort unless it will give me pleas- 
 ure?" with its concomitant laziness, unwill- 
 ingness to work without payment. There is 
 the second spur, Combat, the competitive 
 system, which sets one against another, and 
 finds pleasure not in learning, not exercis- 
 ing the mind, but in getting ahead of one's 
 fellows. Under these two wholly masculine 
 influences we have made the educational 
 process a joy to the few who successfully 
 attain, and a weary effort, with failure and 
 contumely attached, to all the others. This 
 may be a good method in sex-competition, 
 but is wholly out of place and mischievous in 
 education. Its prevalence shows the injuri- 
 ous masculization of this noble social pro- 
 cess. 
 
 What might we look for in a distinctly 
 
152 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 feminine influence? What are these much- 
 dreaded feminine characteristics? 
 
 The maternal ones, of course. The sex 
 instincts of the male are of a preliminary 
 nature, leading merely to the union preced- 
 ing parenthood. The sex instincts of the 
 female cover a far larger field, spending 
 themselves most fully in the lasting love, 
 the ceaseless service, the ingenuity and 
 courage of efficient motherhood. To femin- 
 ize education would be to make it more 
 motherly. The mother does not rear her 
 children by a system of prizes to be longed 
 for and pursued; nor does she set them to 
 compete with one another, giving to the 
 conquering child what he needs, and to the 
 vanquished, blame and deprivation. That 
 would be "unfeminine." 
 
 Motherhood does all it knows to give to 
 each child what is most needed, to teach all 
 to their fullest capacity, to affectionately 
 and efficiently develop the whole of them. 
 
 But this is not what is meant By those who 
 fear so much the influence of women. Accus- 
 tomed to a wholly male standard of living, 
 to masculine ideals, virtues, methods and 
 
EDUCATION 153 
 
 conditions, they say — and say with some 
 justice — that feminine methods and ideals 
 would be destructive to what they call "man- 
 liness." For instance, education to-day is 
 closely interwoven with games and sports, 
 all of an excessively masculine nature. "The 
 education of a boy is carried on largely on 
 the playground!" say the objectors to 
 women teachers. Women cannot join them 
 there; therefore, they cannot educate them. 
 
 What games are these in which woman 
 cannot join? There are forms of fight- 
 ing, of course, violent and fierce, mod- 
 ern modifications of the instinct of sex- 
 combat. It is quite true that women are 
 not adapted, or inclined, to baseball or foot- 
 ball or any violent game. They are per- 
 fectly competent to take part in all normal 
 athletic development, the human range of 
 agility and skill is open to them, as every- 
 one knows who has been to the circus; but 
 they are not built for physical combat; nor 
 do they find ceaseless pleasure in throwing, 
 batting or kicking things. 
 
 But is it true that these strenuous games 
 have the educational value attributed to 
 
154 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 them? It seems like blasphemy to question 
 it. The whole range of male teachers, male 
 pupils, male critics and spectators, are loud 
 in their admiration for the "manliness" 
 developed by the craft, courage, co-ordina- 
 tive power and general "sportsmanship" 
 developed by the game of football, for 
 instance; that a few young men are killed 
 and many maimed, is nothing in compari- 
 son to these advantages. 
 
 Let us review the threefold distinction on 
 which this whole study rests, between mas- 
 culine, feminine and human. Grant that 
 woman, being feminine, cannot emulate 
 man in being masculine — and does not want 
 to. Grant that the masculine qualities have 
 their use and value, as well as feminine ones. 
 There still remains the human qualities 
 shared by both, owned by neither, most 
 important of all. Education is a human 
 process, and should develop human quali- 
 ties — not sex qualities. Surely our boys are 
 sufficiently masculine, without needing a 
 special education to make them more so. 
 
 The error lies here. A strictly mascu- 
 line world, proud of its own sex and despis- 
 
EDUCATION 155 
 
 ing the other, seeing nothing in the world 
 but sex, either male or female, has "viewed 
 with alarm" the steady and rapid growth of 
 humanness. Here, for instance, is a boy 
 visibly tending to be an artist, a musician, 
 a scientific discoverer. Here is another boy 
 not particularly clever in any line, nor 
 ambitious for special work, though he 
 means in a general way to "succeed"; 
 he is, however, a big, husky fellow, a 
 good fighter, mischievous as a monkey, and 
 strong in the virtues covered by the word 
 "sportsmanship." This boy we call "a fine 
 manly fellow." 
 
 We are quite right. He is. He is dis- 
 tinctly and excessively male, at the expense 
 of his humanness. He may make a more 
 prepotent sire than the other, though even 
 that is not certain; he may, and probably 
 will, appeal more strongly to the excessively 
 feminine girl, who has even less humanness 
 than he; but he is not therefore a better 
 citizen. 
 
 The advance of civilization calls for 
 human qualities, in both men and women. 
 Our educational system is thwarted and 
 
156 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 hindered, not as Prof. Wendell and his like 
 would have us believe, by "feminization," 
 but by an over-weening masculization. 
 
 Their position is a simple one. "We are 
 men. Men are human beings. Women are 
 only women. This is a man's world. To 
 get on in it you must do it man-fashion — i.e., 
 fight, and overcome the others. Being civ- 
 ilized in part, we must arrange a sort of "civ- 
 ilized warfare," and learn to play the game, 
 the old crude, fierce male game of combat, 
 and we must educate our boys thereto. No 
 wonder education was denied to women. No 
 wonder their influence is dreaded by an 
 ultra-masculine culture. 
 
 It will change the system in time. It will 
 gradually establish an equal place in life for 
 the feminine characteristics, so long be- 
 littled and derided, and give pre-eminent 
 dignity to the human power. 
 
 Physical culture, for both boys and girls, 
 will be part of such a modified system. All 
 things that both can do together will be 
 accepted as human; but what either boys or 
 girls have to retire apart to practice will be 
 
EDUCATION 157 
 
 frankly called masculine or feminine, and 
 not encouraged in children. 
 
 The most important qualities are the 
 human ones, and will be so named and hon- 
 ored. Courage is a human quality, not a 
 sex-quality. What is commonly called 
 courage in male animals is mere belliger- 
 ence, the fighting instinct. To meet an 
 adversary of his own sort is a universal mas- 
 culine trait; two father cats may fight 
 fiercely each other, but both will run from 
 a dog as quickly as a mother cat. She has 
 courage enough, however, in defense of her 
 kittens. 
 
 What this world most needs to-day in 
 both men and women, is the power to recog- 
 nize our public conditions; to see the relative 
 importance of measures; to learn the pro- 
 cesses of constructive citizenship. We need 
 an education which shall give us facts in the 
 order of their importance; morals and man- 
 ners based on these facts ; and train our per- 
 sonal powers with careful selection, so that 
 each may best serve the community. 
 
 At present, in the larger processes of 
 extra-scholastic education, the advantage 
 
158 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 is still with the boy. From infancy we make 
 the gross mistake of accentuating sex in our 
 children, by dress and all its limitations, by 
 special teaching of what is "ladylike" and 
 "manly." The boy is allowed a freedom of 
 experience far beyond the girl. He learns 
 more of his town and city, more of machin- 
 ery, more of life, passing on from father to 
 son the truths as well as traditions of sex 
 superiority. 
 
 All this is changing before our eyes, with 
 the advancing humanness of women. Not 
 yet, however, has their advance affected, to 
 any large extent, the base of all education; 
 the experience of a child's first years. Here 
 is where the limitations of women have 
 checked race progress most thoroughly. 
 Here hereditary influence was constantly 
 offset by the advance of the male. Social 
 selection did develop higher types of men, 
 though sex-selection reversed still insisted 
 on primitive types of women. But the edu- 
 cative influence of these primitive women, 
 acting most exclusively on the most suscep- 
 tible years of life, has been a serious deter- 
 rent to race progress. 
 
EDUCATION 159 
 
 Here is the dominant male, largely human- 
 ized, yet still measuring life from male 
 standards. He sees women only as a sex. 
 (Note here the criticism of Europeans on 
 American women. "Your women are so 
 sexless!" they say, meaning merely that our 
 women have human qualities as well as fem- 
 inine.) And children he considers as part 
 and parcel of the same domain, both inferior 
 classes, "women and children." 
 
 I recall in Rimmer's beautiful red chalk 
 studies, certain profiles of man, woman and 
 child, and careful explanation that the pro- 
 portion of the woman's face and head were 
 far more akin to the child than to the man. 
 What Mr. Rimmer should have shown, and 
 could have, by profuse illustration, was that 
 the faces of boy and girl differ but slightly, 
 and the faces of old men and women differ 
 as little, sometimes not at all; while the face 
 of the woman approximates the human 
 more closely than that of the man; and the 
 child, representing race more than sex, is 
 naturally more akin to her than to him. The 
 male preserves more primitive qualities, the 
 hairiness, the more pugnacious jaws; the 
 
160 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 female is nearer to the higher human types. 
 
 An ultra-male selection has chosen women 
 for their femininity first, and next for 
 qualities of submissiveness and patient serv- 
 ice bred by long ages of servility. 
 
 This servile womanhood, or the idler and 
 more excessively feminine type, has never 
 appreciated the real power and place of the 
 mother, and has never been able to grasp 
 or to carry out any worthy system of educa- 
 tion for little children. Any experienced 
 teacher, man or woman, will own how rare 
 it is to find a mother capable of a dispas- 
 sionate appreciation of educative values. 
 Books in infant education and child culture 
 generally are read by teachers more than 
 mothers, so our public libraries prove. The 
 mother-instinct, quite suitable and sufficient 
 in animals, is by no means equal to the re- 
 quirements of civilized life. Animal mother- 
 hood furnishes a fresh wave of devotion for 
 each new birth; primitive human mother- 
 hood extends that passionate tenderness 
 over the growing family for a longer period ; 
 but neither can carry education beyond its 
 rudiments. 
 
EDUCATION 161 
 
 So accustomed are we to our world-old 
 method of entrusting the first years of the 
 child to the action of untaught, unbridled 
 mother-instinct, that suggestions as to a bet- 
 ter education for babies are received with 
 the frank derision of massed ignorance. 
 
 That powerful and brilliant writer, Mrs. 
 Josephine Daskam Bacon, among others, 
 has lent her able pen to ridicule and obstruct 
 the gradual awakening of human intelli- 
 gence in mothers, the recognition that babies 
 are no exception to the rest of us in being 
 better off for competent care and service. 
 It seems delightfully absurd to these reac- 
 tionaries that ages of human progress 
 should be of any benefit to babies, save, in- 
 deed, as their more human fathers, spe- 
 cialized and organized, are able to provide 
 them with better homes and a better world 
 to grow up in. The idea that mothers, more 
 human, should specialize and organize as 
 well, and extend to their babies these su- 
 preme advantages, is made a laughing- 
 stock. 
 
 It is easy and profitable to laugh with the 
 majority; but in the judgment of history, 
 
162 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 those who do so, hold uneviable positions. 
 The time is coming when the human mother 
 will recognize the educative possibilities of 
 early childhood, learn that the ability to 
 rightly teach little children is rare and pre- 
 cious, and be proud and glad to avail them- 
 selves of it. 
 
 We shall then see a development of the 
 most valuable human qualities in our chil- 
 dren's minds such as would now seem wildly 
 Utopian. We shall learn from wide and 
 long experience to anticipate and provide 
 for the steps of the unfolding mind, and train 
 it through carefully prearranged experi- 
 ences, to a power of judgment, of self-con- 
 trol, of social perception, now utterly un- 
 thought of. 
 
 Such an education would begin at birth; 
 yes, far before it, in the standards of con- 
 scious human motherhood. It would re- 
 quire a quite different status of wifehood, 
 womanhood, girlhood. It would be wholly 
 impossible if we were never to outgrow our 
 androcentric culture. 
 
"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 163 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "society" and "fashion" 
 
 AMONG our many naive misbeliefs is 
 the current fallacy that "society" is 
 made by women; and that women 
 are responsible for that peculiar social mani- 
 festation called "fashion." 
 
 Men and women alike accept this notion; 
 the serious essayist and philosopher, as 
 well as the novelist and paragrapher, reflect 
 it in their pages. The force of inertia acts 
 in the domain of psychics as well as physics ; 
 any idea pushed into the popular mind 
 with considerable force will keep on going 
 until some opposing force — or the slow re- 
 sistance of friction — stops it at last. 
 
 "Society" consists mostly of women. 
 Women carry on most of its processes, 
 therefore women are its makers and mas- 
 
164 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 ters, they are responsible for it, that is the 
 general belief. 
 
 We might as well hold women responsible 
 for harems — or prisoners for jails. To be 
 helplessly confined to a given place or con- 
 dition does not prove that one has chosen 
 it; much less made it. 
 
 No; in an androcentric culture "society," 
 like every other social relation, is dominated 
 by the male and arranged for his conveni- 
 ence. There are, of course, modifications 
 due to the presence of the other sex; where 
 there are more women than men there are 
 inevitable results of their influence; but the 
 character and conditions of the whole per- 
 formance are dictated by men. 
 
 Social intercourse is the prime condition 
 of human life. To meet, to mingle, to know 
 one another, to exchange, not only definite 
 ideas, facts, and feelings, but to experience 
 that vague general stimulus and enlarged 
 power that comes of contact — all this is 
 essential to our happiness as well as to our 
 progress. 
 
 This grand desideratum has always been 
 monopolized by men as far as possible. 
 
"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 165 
 
 What intercourse was allowed to women 
 has been rigidly hemmed in by man- 
 made conventions. Women accept these 
 conventions, repeat them, enforce them upon 
 their daughters; but they originate with 
 men. 
 
 The feet of the little Chinese girl are 
 bound by her mother and her nurse — but it 
 is not for woman's pleasure that this crip- 
 pling torture was invented. The Oriental 
 veil is worn by women, but it is not for any 
 need of theirs that veils were decreed them. 
 
 When we look at society in its earlier 
 form we find that the public house has al- 
 ways been with us. It is as old almost as 
 the private house; the need for association 
 is as human as the need for privacy. But 
 the public house was — and is — for men only. 
 The woman was kept as far as possible at 
 home. Her female nature was supposed to 
 delimit her life satisfactorily, and her hu- 
 man nature was completely ignored. 
 
 Under the pressure of that human nature 
 she has always rebelled at the social restric- 
 tions which surrounded her; and from the 
 women of older lands gathered at the well, 
 
166 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 or in the market place, to our own women 
 on the church steps or in the sewing circle, 
 they have ceaselessly struggled for the so- 
 cial intercourse which was as much a law of 
 their being as of man's. 
 
 When we come to the modern special field 
 that we call "society," we find it to consist 
 of a carefully arranged set of processes and 
 places wherein women may meet one another 
 and meet men. These vary, of course, with 
 race, country, class and period; from the 
 clean licence of our western customs to the 
 strict chaperonage of older lands; but free 
 as it is in America, even here there are 
 bounds. 
 
 Men associate without any limit but that 
 of inclination and financial capacity. Even 
 class distinction only works one way — the 
 low-class man may not mingle with high- 
 class women; but the high-class man may — 
 and does — mingle with low-class women. It 
 is his society — may not a man do what he will 
 with his own? 
 
 Caste distinctions, as have been ably shown 
 by Prof. Lester F. Ward, are relics of race 
 distinction; the subordinate caste was once 
 
"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 167 
 
 a subordinate race; and while mating, up- 
 ward, was always forbidden to the subject 
 race; mating, downward, was always prac- 
 ticed by the master race. 
 
 The elaborate shading of "the color line" 
 in slavery days, from pure black up through 
 mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, quinteroon, 
 griffada, mustafee, mustee, and sang d'or — 
 to white again; was not through white 
 mothers — but white fathers, never too exclu- 
 sive in their tastes. Even in slavery, the 
 worst horrors were strictly androcentric. 
 
 "Society" is strictly guarded — that is its 
 women are. As always, the main tabu is on 
 the woman. Consider carefully the relation 
 between "society" and the growing girl. She 
 must, of course marry; and her education, 
 manners, character, must of course be pleas- 
 ing to the prospective wooer. That which 
 is desirable in young girls means, naturally, 
 that which is desirable to men. Of all culti- 
 vated accompli shments the first is "inno- 
 cence." Beauty may or may not be forth- 
 coming; but "innocence" is "the chief charm 
 of girlhood." 
 
 Why? What good does it do her? Her 
 
168 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 whole life's success is made to depend on her 
 marrying ; her health and happiness depends 
 on her marrying the right man. The more 
 "innocent" she is, the less she knows, the 
 easier it is for the wrong man to get her. 
 
 As is so feelingly described in "The Sor- 
 rows of Amelia," in "The Ladies' Literary 
 Cabinet," a magazine taken by my grand- 
 mother; "The only foible which the delicate 
 Amelia possessed was an unsuspecting 
 breast to lavish esteem: Unversed in the 
 secret villainies of a base degenerate world, 
 she ever imagined all mankind to be as spot- 
 less as herself. Alas for Amelia! This 
 fatal credulity was the source of all her mis- 
 fortunes." It was. It is yet. 
 
 Just face the facts with new eyes — look 
 at it as if you had never seen "society" 
 before; and observe the position of its 
 "Queen." 
 
 Here is woman. Let us grant that Mother- 
 hood is her chief purpose. (As a female it 
 is. As a human being she has others!) 
 Marriage is our way of safeguarding 
 motherhood; of ensuring "support" and 
 "protection" to the wife and children. 
 
"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 169 
 
 "Society" is very largely used as a means 
 to bring together young people, to promote 
 marriage. If "society" is made and gov- 
 erned by women we should naturally look to 
 see its restrictions and encouragements such 
 as would put a premium on successful 
 maternity, and protect women — and their 
 children — from the evils of ill-regulated 
 fatherhood. 
 
 Do we find this ? By no means. 
 
 "Society" allows the man all liberty — all 
 privilege — all license. There are certain 
 offences which would exclude him; such as 
 not paying gambling debts, or being poor; 
 but offences against womanhood — against 
 motherhood — do not exclude him. 
 
 How about the reverse? 
 
 If "society" is made by women, for 
 women, surely a misstep by a helplessly 
 "innocent" girl, will not injure her standing! 
 
 But it does. She is no longer "innocent." 
 She knows now. She has lost her market 
 value and is thrown out of the shop. Why 
 not? It is his shop — not hers. What 
 women may and may not be, what they 
 
170 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 must and must not do, all is measured from 
 the masculine standard. 
 
 A really feminine "society" based on the 
 needs and pleasures of women, both as 
 females and as human beings, would in the 
 first place accord them freedom and knowl- 
 edge; the knowledge which is power. It 
 would not show us "the queen of the ball- 
 room" in the position of a wall-flower unless 
 favored by masculine invitation; unable to 
 eat unless he brings her something; unable 
 to cross the floor without his arm. Of all 
 blind stultified "royal sluggards" she is the 
 archtype. No, a feminine society would 
 grant at least equality to women in this, their 
 so-called special field. 
 
 Its attitude toward men, however, would 
 be rigidly critical. 
 
 Fancy a real Mrs. Grundy (up to date 
 it has been a Mr., his whiskers hidden in cap- 
 strings) saying, "No, no, young man. You 
 won't do. You've been drinking. The 
 habit's growing on you. You'll make a bad 
 husband." 
 
 Or still more severely, "Out with you, sir ! 
 You've forfeited your right to marry! Go 
 
"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 171 
 
 into retirement for seven years, and when 
 you come back bring a doctor's certificate 
 with you." 
 
 That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it — for 
 "Society" to say? It is ridiculous, in a man's 
 "society." 
 
 The required dress and decoration of 
 "society"; the everlasting eating and drink- 
 ing of "society," the preferred amusements 
 of "society," the absolute requirements and 
 absolute exclusions of "society," are of men, 
 by men, for men — to paraphrase a thread- 
 bare quotation. And then, upon all that 
 vast edifice of masculine influence, they turn 
 upon women as Adam did; and blame them 
 for severity with their fallen sisters! 
 "Women are so hard upon women!" 
 
 They have to be. What man would 
 "allow" his wife, his daughters, to visit and 
 associate with "the fallen"? His esteem 
 would be forfeited, they would lose their 
 "social position," the girl's chance of marry- 
 ing would be gone. 
 
 Men are not so stern. They may visit 
 the unfortunate women, to bring them help, 
 sympathy, re-establishment — or for other 
 
172 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 reasons; and it does not forfeit their social 
 position. Why should it? They make the 
 regulation. 
 
 Women are to-day, far more conspicu- 
 ously than men, the exponents and victims 
 of that mysterious power we call "Fashion." 
 As shown in mere helpless imitation of one 
 another's ideas, customs, methods, there is 
 not much difference ; in patient acquiescence 
 with prescribed models of architecture, fur- 
 niture, literature, or anything else; there is 
 not much difference ; hut in personal decora- 
 tion there is a most conspicuous difference. 
 Women do to-day submit to more grotesque 
 ugliness and absurdity than men; and there 
 are plenty of good reasons for it. Confin- 
 ing our brief study of fashion to fashion in 
 dress, let us observe why it is that women 
 wear these fine clothes at all; and why they 
 change them as they do. 
 
 First, and very clearly, the human female 
 carries the weight of sex decoration, solely 
 because of her economic dependence on the 
 male. She alone in nature adds to the bur- 
 dens of maternity, which she was meant for, 
 this unnatural burden of ornament, which 
 
"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 173 
 
 she was not meant for. Every other female 
 in the world is sufficiently attractive to the 
 male without trimmings. He carries the 
 trimmings, sparing no expense of spread- 
 ing antlers or trailing plumes; no mon- 
 strosity of crest and wattles; to win her 
 favor. 
 
 She is only temporarily interested in him. 
 The rest of the time she is getting her own, 
 living, and caring for her own young. But 
 our women get their bread from their hus- 
 bands, and every other social need. The 
 woman depends on the man for her position 
 in life, as well as the necessities of existence. 
 For herself and for her children she must 
 win and hold him who is the source of all 
 supplies. Therefore she is forced to add to 
 her own natural attractions this "dance of 
 the seven veils," of the seventeen gowns, of 
 the seventy-seven hats of gay delirium. 
 
 There are many who think in one syllable, 
 who say, "women don't dress to please men 
 — they dress to please themselves — and to 
 outshine other women." To these I would 
 suggest a visit to some summer shore resort 
 during the week and extending over Satur- 
 
174 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 day night. The women have all the week to 
 please themselves and outshine one another; 
 but their array on Saturday seems to 
 indicate the approach of some new force or 
 attraction. 
 
 If all this does not satisfy I would then 
 call their attention to the well-known fact 
 that the young damsel previous to marriage 
 spends far more time and ingenuity in 
 decoration than she does afterward. This 
 has long been observed and deprecated by 
 those who write Advice to Wives, on the 
 ground that this difference in displeasing to 
 the husband — that she loses her influence 
 over him; which is true. But since his own 
 "society," knowing his weakness, has tied 
 him to her by law; why should she keep up 
 what is after all an unnatural exertion? 
 
 That excellent magazine "Good House- 
 keeping" has been running for some months 
 a rhymed and illustrated story of "Miss 
 Melissa Clarissa McRae," an extremely 
 dainty and well-dressed stenographer, who 
 captured and married a fastidious young 
 man, her employer, by the force of her arti- 
 ficial attractions — and then lost his love after 
 
"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 175 
 
 marriage by a sudden unaccountable sloven- 
 liness — the same old story. 
 
 If this is not enough, let me instance fur- 
 ther the attitude toward "Fashion" of that 
 class of women who live most openly and 
 directly upon the favor of men. These know 
 their business. To continually attract the 
 vagrant fancy of the male, nature's born 
 "variant," they must not only pile on arti- 
 ficial charms, but change them constantly. 
 They do. From the leaders in this profes- 
 sion comes a steady stream of changing fash- 
 ions ; the more extreme and bizarre, the more 
 successful — and because they are successful 
 they are imitated. 
 
 If men did not like changes in fashion be 
 assured these professional men-pleasers 
 would not change them, but since Nature's 
 Variant tires of any face in favor of a new 
 one, the lady who would hold her sway and 
 cannot change her face (except in color) 
 must needs change her hat and gown. 
 
 But the Arbiter, the Ruling Cause, he who 
 not only by choice demands, but as a business 
 manufactures and supplies this amazing 
 stream of fashions ; again like Adam blames 
 
176 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 the woman — for accepting what he both 
 demands and supplies. 
 
 A further proof, if more were needed, 
 is shown in this; that in exact proportion as 
 women grow independent, educated, wise 
 and free, do they become less submissive to 
 men-made fashions. Was this improvement 
 hailed with sympathy and admiration — 
 crowned with masculine favor? 
 
 The attitude of men toward those women 
 who have so far presumed to "un-sex" them- 
 selves is known to all. They like women to 
 be foolish, changeable, always newly attrac- 
 tive; and while women must "attract" for 
 a living — why they do, that's all. 
 
 It is a pity. It is humiliating to any far- 
 seeing woman to have to recognize this glar- 
 ing proof of the dependent, degraded posi- 
 tion of her sex; and it ought to be humilia- 
 ting to men to see the results of their mas- 
 tery. These crazily decorated little crea- 
 tures do not represent Womanhood. 
 
 When the artist uses the woman as the 
 type of every highest ideal; as Justice, 
 Liberty, Charity, Truth — he does not repre- 
 sent her trimmed. In any part of the world 
 
"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 177 
 
 where women are even in part economically- 
 independent there we find less of the absurd- 
 ities of fashion. Women who work cannot 
 be utterly absurd. 
 
 But the idle woman, the Queen of Society, 
 who must please men within their prescribed 
 bounds; and those of the half- world, who 
 must please them at any cost — these are the 
 vehicles of fashion. 
 
178 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 LAW AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 IT IS easy to assume that men are natu- 
 rally the lawmakers and law enforcers, 
 under the plain historic fact that they 
 have been such„since the beginning of the 
 patriarchate. 
 
 Back of law lies custom and tradition. 
 Back of government lies the correlative 
 activity of any organized group. What 
 group-insects and group-animals evolve un- 
 consciously and fulfill by their social 
 instincts, we evolve consciously and fulfill 
 by arbitrary systems called laws and govern- 
 ments. In this, as in all other fields of our 
 action, we must discriminate between the 
 humanness of the function in process of 
 development, and the influence of the male 
 or female upon it. Quite apart from what 
 
LAW AND GOVERNMENT 179 
 
 they may like or dislike as sexes, from their 
 differing tastes and faculties, lies the much 
 larger field of human progress, in which they 
 equally participate. 
 
 On this plane the evolution of law and 
 government proceeds somewhat as follows: 
 The early woman-centered group organ- 
 ized on maternal lines of common love and 
 service. The early combinations of men 
 were first a grouped predacity — organized 
 hunting; then a grouped belligerency — 
 organized warfare. 
 
 By special development some minds are 
 able to perceive the need of certain lines of 
 conduct over others, and to make this clear 
 to their fellows; whereby, gradually, our 
 higher social nature establishes rules and pre- 
 cedents to which we personally agree to sub- 
 mit. The process of social development is 
 one of progressive co-ordination. 
 
 From independent individual action for 
 individual ends, up to interdependent social 
 action for social ends we slowly move; the 
 "devil" in the play being the old Ego, which 
 has to be harmonized with the new social 
 spirit. This social process, like all others, 
 
180 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 having been in masculine hands, we may 
 find in it the same marks of one-sided spe- 
 cialization so visible in our previous studies. 
 
 The coersive attitude is essentially male. 
 In the ceaseless age-old struggle of sex com- 
 bat he developed the desire to overcome, 
 which is always stimulated by resistance ; and 
 in this later historic period of his supremacy, 
 he further developed the habit of dominance 
 and mastery. We may instance the con- 
 trast between the conduct of a man when 
 "in love," as while courting; in which period 
 he falls into the natural position of his sex 
 towards the other — namely, that of a wooer ; 
 and his behavior when, with marriage, they 
 enter the artificial relation of the master 
 male and servile female. His "instinct of 
 dominance" does not assert itself during the 
 earlier period, which was a million times 
 longer than the latter; it only appears in 
 the more modern and arbitrary relation. 
 
 Among other animals monogamous union 
 is not accompanied by any such discordant 
 and unnatural feature. However recent as 
 this habit is when considered biologically, it 
 is as old as civilization when we consider it 
 
LAW AND GOVERNMENT 181 
 
 historically : quite old enough to be a serious 
 force. Under its pressure we see the legal 
 systems and forms of government slowly 
 evolving, the general human growth always 
 heavily perverted by the special masculine 
 influence. First we find the mere force of 
 custom governing us, the mores of the 
 ancient people. Then comes the gradual 
 appearance of authority, from the purely 
 natural leadership of the best hunter or 
 fighter up through the unnatural mastery of 
 the patriarch, owning and governing his 
 wives, children, slaves and cattle, and mak- 
 ing such rules and regulations as pleased 
 him. 
 
 Our laws as we support them now are 
 slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which 
 require a special caste to interpret and 
 another to enforce ; wherein the average citi- 
 zen knows nothing of the law, and cares only 
 to evade it when he can, obey it when he 
 must. In the household, that stunted, crip- 
 pled rudiment of the matriarchate, where 
 alone we can find what is left of the natural 
 influence of woman, the laws and govern- 
 ment, so far as she is responsible for them, 
 
182 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 are fairly simple, and bear visible relation 
 to the common good, which relation is clearly 
 and persistently taught. 
 
 In the larger household of city and state 
 the educational part of the law is grievously 
 neglected. It makes no allowance for ignor- 
 ance. If a man breaks a law of which he 
 never heard he is not excused therefor; the 
 penalty rolls on just the same. Fancy a 
 mother making solemn rules and regulations 
 for her family, telling the children nothing 
 about them, and then punishing them when 
 they disobey the unknown laws! 
 
 The use of force is natural to the male; 
 while as a human being he must needs legis- 
 late somewhat in the interests of the com- 
 munity, as a male being he sees no necessity 
 for other enforcement than by penalty. To 
 violently oppose, to fight, to trample to the 
 earth, to triumph in loud bellowings of sav- 
 age joy — these are the primitive male in- 
 stincts; and the perfectly natural social 
 instincts which leads to peaceful persuasion, 
 to education, to an easy harmony of action, 
 are contemptuously ranked as "feminine," 
 or as "philanthropic" — which is almost as 
 
LAW AND GOVERNMENT 183 
 
 bad. "Men need stronger measures" they 
 say proudly. Yes, but four-fifths of the 
 world are women and children! 
 
 As a matter of fact the woman, the 
 mother, is the first co-ordinator, legislator, 
 administrator and executive. From the 
 guarding and guidance of her cubs and kit- 
 tens up to the longer, larger management 
 of human youth, she is the first to consider 
 group interests and co-relate them. 
 
 As a father the male grows to share in 
 these original feminine functions, and with 
 us, fatherhood having become socialized 
 while motherhood has not, he does the best 
 he can, alone, to do the world's mother- 
 work in his father way. 
 
 In study of any long established human 
 custom it is very difficult to see it clearly and 
 dispassionately. Our minds are heavily 
 loaded with precedent, with race-custom, 
 with the iron weight called authority. These 
 heavy forces reach their most perfect expres- 
 sion in the absolutely masculine field of war- 
 fare," the absolute authority; the brain- 
 less, voiceless obedience; the relentless 
 penalty. Here we have male coercion 
 
184 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 at its height; law and government wholly 
 arbitrary. The result is as might be ex- 
 pected, a fine machine of destruction. But 
 destruction is not a human process — merely 
 a male process of eliminating the unfit. 
 
 The female process is to select the fit; her 
 elimination is negative and painless. 
 
 Greater than either is the human process, 
 to develop fitness. 
 
 Men are at present far more human than 
 women. Alone upon their self-seized thrones 
 they have carried as best they might the bur- 
 dens of the state ; and the history of law and 
 government shows them as changing slowly 
 but irresistibly in the direction of social 
 improvement. 
 
 The ancient kings were the joyous 
 apotheosis of masculinity. Power and 
 Pride were theirs; Limitless Display; 
 Boundless Self-indulgence ; Irresistible 
 Authority. Slaves and courtiers bowed be- 
 fore them, subjects obeyed them, captive 
 women filled their harems. But the day of 
 the masculine monarchy is passing, and 
 the day of the human democracy is coming. 
 In a democracy law and government both 
 
LAW AND GOVERNMENT 185 
 
 change. Laws are no longer imposed on 
 the people by one above them, but are 
 evolved from the people themselves. How 
 absurd that the people should not be edu- 
 cated in the laws they make ; that the trailing 
 remnants of blind submission should still 
 becloud their minds and make them bow 
 down patiently under the absurd pressure 
 of outgrown tradition ! 
 
 Democratic government is no longer an 
 exercise of arbitrary authority from those 
 above, but is an organization for public ser- 
 vice of the people themselves — or will be 
 when it is really attained. 
 
 In this change government ceases to be 
 compulsion, and becomes agreement; law 
 ceases to be authority and becomes co-or- 
 dination. When we learn the rules of 
 whist or chess we do not obey them because 
 we fear to be punished if we don't, but be- 
 cause we want to play the game. The rules 
 of human conduct are for our own happiness 
 and service — any child can see that. Every 
 child will see it when laws are simplified, 
 based on sociology, and taught in schools. 
 A child of ten should be considered grossly 
 
186 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 uneducated who could not recite the main 
 features of the laws of his country, state, 
 and city; and those laws should be so simple 
 in their principles that a child of ten could 
 understand them. 
 
 Teacher: "What is a tax?" 
 
 Child: "A tax is the money we agree to 
 pay to keep up our common advantages." 
 
 Teacher: "Why do we all pay taxes?" 
 
 Child: "Because the country belongs to 
 all of us, and we must all pay our share to 
 keep it up." 
 
 Teacher: "In what proportion do we pay 
 taxes?" 
 
 Child: "In proportion to how much 
 money we have." (Sotto voce '."Of course.") 
 
 Teacher: "What is it to evade taxes?" 
 
 Child: "It is treason." (Sotto voce: "And 
 a dirty mean trick.") 
 
 In masculine administration of the laws 
 we may follow the instinctive love of battle 
 down through the custom of "trial by com- 
 bat" — only recently outgrown, to our 
 present method, where each contending 
 party hires a champion to represent him, 
 and these fight it out in a wordy war, with 
 
LAW AND GOVERNMENT 187 
 
 tricks and devices of complex ingenuity, 
 enjoying this kind of struggle as they enjoy 
 all other kinds. 
 
 It is the old masculine spirit of govern- 
 ment as authority which is so slow in adopt- 
 ing itself to the democratic idea of govern- 
 ment as service. That it should be a repre- 
 sentative government they grasp, but repre- 
 sentative of what? of the common will, they 
 say; the will of the majority — never think- 
 ing that it is the common good, the com- 
 mon welfare, that government should repre- 
 sent. 
 
 It is the inextricable masculininty in our 
 idea of government which so revolts at the 
 idea of women as voters. "To govern:" 
 that means to boss, to control, to have 
 authority, and that only, to most minds. 
 They cannot bear to think of the women as 
 having control over even their own affairs; 
 to control is masculine, they assume. See- 
 ing only self-interest as a natural impulse, 
 and the ruling powers of the state as a sort 
 of umpire, an authority to preserve the rules 
 of the game while men fight it out forever; 
 they see in a democracy merely a wider 
 
188 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 range of self interest, and a wider, freer 
 field to fight in. 
 
 The law dictates the rules, the govern- 
 ment enforces them, but the main business 
 of life, hitherto, has been esteemed as one 
 long fierce struggle; each man seeking for 
 himself. To deliberately legislate for the 
 service of all the people, to use the govern- 
 ment as the main engine of that service, is 
 a new process, wholly human, and difficult 
 of development under an androcentric cul- 
 ture. 
 
 Furthermore they put forth those naively 
 androcentric protests — women cannot fight, 
 and in case their laws were resisted by men 
 they could not enforce them — therefore 
 they should not vote ! 
 
 What they do not so plainly say, but very 
 strongly think, is that women should not 
 share the loot which to their minds is so 
 large a part of politics. 
 
 Here we may trace clearly the social 
 heredity of male government. 
 
 Fix clearly in your mind the first headship 
 of man — the leader of the pack as it were — 
 the Chief Hunter. Then the second head- 
 
LAW AND GOVERNMENT 189 
 
 ship, the Chief Fighter. Then the third 
 head-ship, the Chief of the Family. Then 
 the long line of Chiefs and Captains, War- 
 lords and Landlords, Rulers and Kings. 
 
 The Hunter hunted for prey, and got it. 
 The Fighter enriched himself with the 
 spoils of the vanquished. The Patriarch 
 lived on the labor of women and slaves. All 
 down the ages, from frank piracy and rob- 
 bery to the measured toll of tribute, ran- 
 som and indemnity, we see the same natural 
 instinct of the hunter and fighter. In his 
 hands the government is a thing to sap and 
 wreck, to live on. It is his essential impulse 
 to want something very much; to struggle 
 and fight for it ; to take all he can get. 
 
 Set against this the giving love that comes 
 with motherhood; the endless service that 
 comes of motherhood; the peaceful admin- 
 istration in the interest of the family that 
 comes of motherhood. We prate much of 
 the family as the unit of the state. If it is — 
 why not run the state on that basis? Gov- 
 ernment by women, so far as it is influenced 
 by their sex, would be influenced by mother- 
 hood; and that would mean care, nurture, 
 
190 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 provision, education. We have to go far 
 down the scale for any instance of organ- 
 ized motherhood, but we do find it in the 
 hymenoptera ; in the overflowing industry, 
 prosperity, peace and loving service of the 
 ant-hill and bee-hive. These are the most 
 highly socialized types of life, next to ours, 
 and they are feminine types. 
 
 We as human beings have a far higher 
 form of association, with further issues than 
 mere wealth and propagation of the species. 
 In this human process we should never for- 
 get that men are far more advanced than 
 women, at present. Because of their human- 
 ness has come all the noble growth of civili- 
 zation, in spite of their maleness. 
 
 As human beings both male and female 
 stand alike useful and honorable, and should 
 in our governments be alike used and hon- 
 ored; but as creatures of sex, the female is 
 fitter than the male for administration of 
 constructive social interests. The change 
 in governmental processes which marks our 
 times is a change in principle. Two great 
 movements convulse the world to-day, the 
 woman's movement and the labor move- 
 
LAW AND GOVERNMENT 191 
 
 ment. Each regards the other as of less 
 moment than itself. Both are parts of the 
 same world-process. 
 
 We are entering upon a period of social 
 consciousness. Whereas so far almost all of 
 us have seen life only as individuals, and 
 have regarded the growing strength and 
 riches of the social body as merely so much 
 the more to fatten on ; now we are beginning 
 to take intelligent interest in our social 
 nature, to understand it a little, and to begin 
 to feel the vast increase of happiness and 
 power that comes of real Human life. 
 
 In this change of systems a government 
 which consisted only of prohibition and 
 commands; of tax collecting and making 
 war; is rapidly giving way to a system 
 which intelligently manages our common 
 interests, which is a growing and improving 
 method of universal service. Here the 
 socialist is perfectly right in his vision of 
 the economic welfare to be assured by the 
 socialization of industry, though that is but 
 part of the new development; and the in- 
 dividualist who opposes socialism, crying 
 loudly for the advantage of "free competi- 
 
192 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 tion" is but voicing the spirit of the preda- 
 ceous male. 
 
 So with the opposers of the suffrage of 
 women. They represent, whether men or 
 women, the male view-point. They see the 
 women only as a female, utterly absorbed 
 in feminine functions, belittled and ignored 
 as her long tutelage has made her; and they 
 see the man as he sees himself, the sole mas- 
 ter of human affairs for as long as we have 
 historic record. 
 
 This, fortunately, is not long. We can 
 now see back of the period of his supremacy, 
 and are beginning to see beyond it. We are 
 well under way already in a higher stage of 
 social development, conscious, well-organ- 
 ized, wisely managed, in which the laws shall 
 be simple and founded on constructive prin- 
 ciples instead of being a set of ring-regula- 
 tions within which people may fight as they 
 will; and in which the government shall be 
 recognized in its full use; not only the 
 sternly dominant father, and the wisely ser- 
 viceable mother, but the real union of all 
 people to sanely and economically manage 
 their affairs. 
 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 193 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 
 
 THE human concept of Sin has had 
 its uses, no doubt; and our special 
 invention of a thing called Punish- 
 ment has also served a purpose. 
 
 Social evolution has worked in many ways 
 wastefully, and with unnecessary pain, but 
 it compares very favorably with natural 
 evolution. 
 
 As we grow wiser; as our social conscious- 
 ness develops, we are beginning to improve 
 on nature in more ways than one ; a part of 
 the same great process, but of a more highly 
 sublimated sort. 
 
 Nature shows a world of varied and 
 changing environment. Into this comes 
 Life — pushing and spreading in every direc- 
 tion. A pretty hard time Life has of it. In 
 the first place it is dog eat dog in every direc- 
 
194 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 tion; the joy of the hunter and the most 
 un joyous fear of the hunted. 
 
 But quite outside of this essential danger, 
 the environment waits, grim and unappeas- 
 able, and continuously destroys the innocent 
 myriads who fail to meet the one requirement 
 of life — Adaptation. So we must not be too 
 severe in self-condemnation when we see 
 how foolish, cruel, crazily wasteful, is our 
 attitude toward crime and punishment. 
 
 We become socially conscious largely 
 through pain, and as we begin to see how 
 much of the pain is wholly of our own caus- 
 ing we are overcome with shame. But the 
 right way for society to face its past is the 
 same as for the individual; to see where it 
 was wrong, and stop it — but to waste no 
 time and no emotion over past misdeeds. 
 
 What is our present state as to crime? It 
 is pretty bad. Some say it is worse than it 
 used to be; others that it is better. At any 
 rate it is bad enough, and a disgrace to our 
 civilization. We have murders by the 
 thousand and thieves by the million, of all 
 kinds and sizes; we have what we tenderly 
 call "immorality," from the "errors of 
 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 195 
 
 youth" to the sodden grossness of old age; 
 married, single, and mixed. We have all 
 the old kinds of wickedness and a lot of new 
 ones, until one marvels at the purity and 
 power of human nature, that it should carry 
 so much disease and still grow on to higher 
 things. 
 
 Also we have punishment still with us; 
 private and public; applied like a rabbit's 
 foot, with as little regard to its efficacy. Does 
 a child offend? Punish it! Does a woman 
 offend? Punish her! Does a man offend? 
 Punish him! Does a group offend? Punish 
 them! 
 
 "What for?" some one suddenly asks. 
 
 "To make them stop doing it!" 
 
 "But they have done it!" 
 
 "To make them not do it again, then." 
 
 "But they do it again — and worse." 
 
 "To prevent other people's doing it, then." 
 
 "But it does not prevent them- — the 
 crime keeps on. What good is your punish- 
 ment?" 
 
 What indeed! 
 
 What is the application of punishment to 
 crime? Its base, its prehistoric base, is 
 
196 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 simple retaliation; and this is by no means 
 wholly male, let us freely admit. The instinct 
 of resistance, of opposition, of retaliation, 
 lies deeper than life itself. Its underlying 
 law is the law of physics — action and reac- 
 tion are equal. Life's expression of this law 
 is perfectly natural, but not always profit- 
 able. Hit your hand on a stone wall, and 
 the stone wall hits your hand. Very good; 
 you learn that stone walls are hard, and 
 govern yourself accordingly. 
 
 Conscious young humanity observed and 
 philosophized, congratulating itself on its 
 discernment. "A man hits me — I hit the 
 man a little harder — then he won't do it 
 again." Unfortunately he did do it again — 
 a little harder still. The effort to hit harder 
 carried on the action and reaction till society, 
 hitting hardest of all, set up a system of 
 legal punishment, of unlimited severity. It 
 imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it 
 killed ; it destroyed whole families, and razed 
 contumelious cities to the ground. 
 
 Therefore all crime ceased, of course? 
 No? But crime was mitigated, surety ! Per- 
 haps. This we have proven at last; that 
 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 197 
 
 crime does not decrease in proportion to 
 the severest punishment. Little by little we 
 have ceased to raze the cities, to wipe out 
 the families, to cut off the ears, to torture; 
 and our imprisonment is changing from slow 
 death and insanity to a form of attempted 
 improvement. 
 
 But punishment as a principle remains in 
 good standing, and is still the main reliance 
 where it does the most harm — in the rearing 
 of children. "Spare the rod and spoil the 
 child" remains in belief, unmodified by the 
 millions of children spoiled by the unspared 
 rod. 
 
 The breeders of racehorses have learned 
 better, but not the breeders of children. Our 
 trouble is simply the lack of intelligence. We 
 face the babyish error and the hideous crime 
 in exactly the same attitude. 
 
 "This person has done something offen- 
 sive." 
 
 Yes? — and one waits eagerly for the first 
 question of the rational mind — but does not 
 hear it. One only hears, "Punish him!" 
 
 What is the first question of the rational 
 mind? 
 
198 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 Human beings are not first causes. They 
 do not evolve conduct out of nothing. The 
 child does this, the man does that, because 
 of something; because of many things. If 
 we do not like the way people behave, and 
 wish them to behave better, we should, if 
 we are rational beings, study the conditions 
 that produce the conduct. 
 
 The connection between our archaic sys- 
 tems of punishment and our androcentric 
 culture is two-fold. The impulse of resist- 
 ance, while, as we have seen, of the deepest 
 natural origin, is expressed more strongly 
 in the male than in the female. The tendency 
 to hit back and hit harder has been fostered 
 in him by sex-combat till it has become of 
 great intensity. The habit of authority too, 
 as old as our history; and the cumulative 
 weight of all religions and systems of law 
 and government, have furthermore built up 
 and intensified the spirit of retaliation and 
 vengeance. 
 
 They have even deified this concept, in 
 ancient religions, crediting to God the evil 
 passions of men. As the small boy recited : 
 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 199 
 
 "Vengeance. A mean desire to get even with 
 your enemies: 'Vengeance is mine saith the 
 Lord — I will repay.' " 
 
 The Christian religion teaches better 
 things; better than its expositors and 
 upholders have ever understood — much less 
 practised. 
 
 The teaching of "Love your enemies, do 
 good unto them that hate you, and serve 
 them that despitefully use you and persecute 
 you," has too often resulted, when practised 
 at all, in a sentimental negation; a patheti- 
 cally useless attitude of non-resistance. You 
 might as well base a religion on a feather 
 pillow ! 
 
 The advice given was active: direct; con- 
 crete. "Love!" Love is not non-resistance. 
 "Do good!" Doing good is not non-resist- 
 ance. "Serve!" Service is not non-resist- 
 ance. 
 
 Again we have an overwhelming proof of 
 the far-reaching effects of our androcentric 
 culture. Consider it once more. Here is 
 one by nature combative and desirous, and 
 not by nature intended to monopolize the 
 management of his species. He assumes to 
 
200 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 be not only the leader, but the whole thing — 
 to be humanity itself, and to see in woman 
 as Grant Allen so clearly put it "Not only 
 not the race ; she is not even half the race, but 
 a sub-species, told off for purposes of repro- 
 duction merely." 
 
 Under this monstrous assumption, his 
 sex-attributes wholly identified with his 
 human attributes, and overshadowing them, 
 he has imprinted on every human institu- 
 tion the tastes and tendencies of the male. 
 As a male he fought, as a male human being 
 he fought more, and deified fighting; and 
 in a culture based on desire and combat, 
 loud with strident self-expression, there 
 could be but slow acceptance of the more 
 human methods urged by Christianity. "It 
 is a religion for slaves and women!" said 
 the warrior of old. (Slaves and women 
 were largely the same thing.) "It is a 
 religion for slaves and women" says the 
 advocate of the Superman. 
 
 Well? Who did the work of all the 
 ancient world? Who raised the food and 
 garnered it and cooked it and served it? 
 Who built the houses, the temples, the 
 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 201 
 
 aqueducts, the city wall? Who made the 
 furniture, the tools, the weapons, the uten- 
 sils, the ornaments — made them strong and 
 heautiful and useful? Who kept the human 
 race going, somehow, in spite of the constant 
 hideous waste of war, and slowly built up 
 the real industrial civilization behind that 
 gory show? — Why just the slaves and the 
 women. 
 
 A religion which had attractions for the 
 real human type is not therefore to be 
 utterly despised by the male. 
 
 In modern history we may watch with 
 increasing ease the slow, sure progress of 
 our growing humanness beneath the weak- 
 ening shell of an all-male dominance. And 
 in this field of what begins in the nursery 
 as "discipline," and ends on the scaffold as 
 "punishment," we can clearly see that 
 blessed change. 
 
 What is the natural, the human attribute? 
 What does this "Love," and "Do good," 
 and "Serve" mean? In the blundering old 
 church, still androcentric, there was a great 
 to-do to carry out this doctrine, in elaborate 
 symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples, 
 
202 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and 
 kings and cardinals went solemnly through 
 the motions of serving them. As the Eng- 
 lish schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket 
 washed the feet of leopards." 
 
 Service and love and doing good must 
 always remain side issues in a male world. 
 Service and love and doing good are the 
 spirit of motherhood, and the essence of 
 human life. 
 
 Human life is service, and is not combat. 
 There you have the nature of the change 
 now upon us. 
 
 What has the male mind made of Chris- 
 tianity? 
 
 Desire — to save one's own soul. Combat 
 — with the Devil. Self-expression — the 
 whole gorgeous outpouring of pageant and 
 display, from the jewels of the high priest's 
 breastplate to the choir of mutilated men to 
 praise a male Deity no woman may so serve. 
 What kind of mind can imagine a kind of 
 god who would like a eunuch better than a 
 woman ? 
 
 For woman they made at last a place — 
 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 203 
 
 the usual place — of renunciation, sacrifice 
 and service, the Sisters of Mercy and their 
 kind; and in that loving service the woman 
 soul has been content, not yearning for 
 cardinal's cape or bishop's mitre. 
 
 All this is changing — changing fast. 
 Everywhere the churches are broadening out 
 into more service, and the service broadening 
 out beyond a little group of widows and 
 fatherless, of sick and in prison, to embrace 
 its true field — all human life. In this new 
 attitude, how shall we face the problems of 
 crime ? 
 
 Thus: "It is painfully apparent that a 
 certain percentage of our people do not 
 function properly. They perform anti- 
 social acts. Why? What is the matter 
 with them?" 
 
 Then the heart and mind of society is 
 applied to the question, and certain results 
 are soon reached; others slowly worked 
 toward. 
 
 First result. Some persons are so morally 
 diseased that they must have hospital treat- 
 ment. The world's last prison will be simply 
 a hospital for moral incurables. They must 
 
204 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 by no means reproduce their kind — that can 
 be attended to at once. Some are morally 
 diseased, but may be cured, and the best 
 powers of society will be used to cure them. 
 Some are only morally diseased because of 
 the conditions in which they are born and 
 reared, and here society can save millions at 
 once. 
 
 An intelligent society will no more neglect 
 its children than an intelligent mother will 
 neglect her children; and will see as clearly 
 that ill-fed, ill-dressed, ill-taught and vilely 
 associated little ones must grow up gravely 
 injured. 
 
 As a matter of fact we make our crop of 
 criminals, just as we make our idiots, blind, 
 crippled, and generally defective. Every- 
 one is a baby first, and a baby is not a crim- 
 inal, unless we make it so. It never would 
 be — in right conditions. Sometimes a per- 
 vert is born, as sometimes a two-headed calf 
 is born, but they are not common. 
 
 The older, simpler forms of crime we may 
 prevent with ease and despatch, but how of 
 the new ones? — big, terrible, far-reaching, 
 wide-spread crimes, for which we have as 
 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 205 
 
 yet no names; and before which our old 
 system of anti-personal punishment falls 
 helpless? What of the crimes of poisoning 
 a community with bad food; of defiling the 
 water; of blackening the air; of stealing 
 whole forests ? What of the crimes of work- 
 ing little children; of building and renting 
 tenements that produce crime and physical 
 disease as well? What of the crime of living 
 on the wages of fallen women — of hiring 
 men to ruin innocent young girls ; of holding 
 them enslaved and selling them for profit? 
 ( These things are only "misdemeanors" in a 
 man-made world!) 
 
 And what about a crime like this; to use 
 the public press to lie to the public for pri- 
 vate ends? No name yet for this crime; 
 much less a penalty. 
 
 And this: To bring worse than leprosy to 
 an innocent clean wife who loves and trusts 
 you? 
 
 Or this: To knowingly plant poison in an 
 unborn child? 
 
 No names for these; no "penalties"; no 
 conceivable penalty that could touch them. 
 
206 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 The whole punishment system falls to the 
 ground before the huge mass of evil that 
 confronts us. If we saw a procession of air 
 ships flying over a city and dropping bombs, 
 should we rush madly off after each one cry- 
 ing, "Catch him! Punish him!" or should we 
 try to stop the procession? 
 
 The time is coming when the very word 
 "crime" will be disused, except in poems 
 and orations; and "punishment," both word 
 and deed, be obliterated. We are beginning 
 to learn a little of the nature of humanity; 
 its goodness, its beauty, its lovingness; and 
 to see that even its stupidity is only due to 
 our foolish old methods of education. 
 
 It is not new power, new light, new hope 
 that we need, but to understand what ails lis. 
 
 We know enough now, we care enough 
 now, we are strong enough now, to make the 
 whole world a thousand fold better in a gen- 
 eration; but we are shackled, chained, 
 blinded, by old false notions. The ideas of 
 the past, the sentiments of the past, the atti- 
 tude and prejudice of the past, are in our 
 way; and among them none more univer- 
 sally mischievous than this great body of 
 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 207 
 
 ideas and sentiment, prejudices and habits, 
 which make up the offensive network of the 
 androcentric culture. 
 
208 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 POLITICS AND WARFARE 
 
 I GO to my old dictionary, and find; 
 "Politics, 1. The science of govern- 
 ment ; that part of ethics which has to 
 do with the regulation and government of a 
 nation or state, the preservation of its safety, 
 peace and prosperity ; the defence of its exist- 
 ence and rights against foreign control or 
 conquest; the augmentation of its strength 
 and resources, and the protection of its citi- 
 zens in their rights; with the preservation 
 and improvement of their morals. 2. The 
 management of political parties; the ad- 
 vancement of candidates to office; in a bad 
 sense, artful or dishonest management to 
 secure the success of political measures or 
 party schemes, political trickery." 
 
 From present day experience we might 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 209 
 
 add, 3. Politics, practical; The art of 
 organizing and handling men in large num- 
 bers, manipulating votes, and, in especial, 
 appropriating public wealth. 
 
 We can easily see that the "science of gov- 
 ernment" may be divided into "pure" and 
 "applied" like other sciences, but that it is 
 "a part of ethics" will be news to many 
 minds. 
 
 Yet why not? Ethics is the science of con- 
 duct, and politics is merely one field of con- 
 duct; a very common one. Its connection 
 with warfare in this chapter is perfectly legi- 
 timate in view of the history of politics on 
 the one hand, and the imperative modern 
 issues which are to-day opposed to this estab- 
 lished combination. 
 
 There are many to-day who hold that 
 politics need not be at all connected with 
 warfare; and others who hold that politics 
 is warfare from start to finish. 
 
 In order to dissociate the two ideas com- 
 pletely, let us give a paraphrase of the 
 above definition, applying it to domestic 
 management — that part of ethics which has 
 to do with the regulation and government of 
 
210 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 a family; the preservation of its safety, 
 peace and prosperity; the defense of its 
 existence and rights against any stranger's 
 interference or control ; the augmentation of 
 its strength and resources, and the protec- 
 tion of its members in their rights; with the 
 preservation and improvement of their 
 morals. 
 
 All this is simple enough, and in no way 
 masculine; neither is it feminine, save in 
 this; that the tendency to care for, defend 
 and manage a group, is in its origin 
 maternal. 
 
 In every human sense, however, politics 
 has left its maternal base far in the back- 
 ground; and as a field of study and of action 
 is as well adapted to men as to women. 
 There is no reason whatever why men should 
 not develop great ability in this department 
 of ethics, and gradually learn how to pre- 
 serve the safety, peace and prosperity of 
 their nation; together with those other ser- 
 vices as to resources, protection of citizens, 
 and improvement of morals. 
 
 Men, as human beings, are capable of the 
 noblest devotion and efficiency in these mat- 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 211 
 
 ters, and have often shown them; but their 
 devotion and efficiency have been marred in 
 this, as in so many other fields, by the con- 
 stant obtrusion of an ultra-masculine tend- 
 ency. 
 
 In warfare, per se, we find maleness in its 
 absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied 
 the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from 
 the initial instinct of combat, through every 
 form of glorious ostentation, with the loud- 
 est possible accompaniment of noise. 
 
 Primitive warfare had for its climax the 
 possession of the primitive prize, the female. 
 Without dogmatising on so remote a period, 
 it may be suggested as a fair hypothesis that 
 this was the very origin of our organized 
 raids. We certainly find war before there 
 was property in land, or any other property 
 to tempt aggressors. Women, however, 
 there were always, and when a specially 
 androcentric tribe had reduced its supply of 
 women by cruel treatment, or they were not 
 born in sufficient numbers, owing to hard 
 conditions, men must needs go farther afield 
 after other women. Then, since the men of 
 the other tribes naturally objected to losing 
 
212 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 their main labor supply and comfort, there 
 was war. 
 
 Thus based on the sex impulse, it gave 
 full range to the combative instinct, and 
 further to that thirst for vocal exultation so 
 exquisitely male. The proud bellowings of 
 the conquering stag, as he trampled on his 
 prostrate rival, found higher expression in 
 the "triumphs" of old days, when the con- 
 quering warrior returned to his home, with 
 victims chained to his chariot wheels, and 
 trumpets braying. 
 
 When property became an appreciable 
 factor in life, warfare took on a new signifi- 
 cance. What was at first mere destruction, 
 in the effort to defend or obtain some hunt- 
 ing ground or pasture ; and, always, to secure 
 the female; now coalesced with the acquisi- 
 tive instinct, and the long black ages of 
 predatory warfare closed in upon the world. 
 
 Where the earliest form exterminated, the 
 later enslaved, and took tribute ; and for cen- 
 tury upon century the "gentleman adven- 
 turer," i. e., the primitive male, greatly pre- 
 ferred to acquire wealth by the simple old 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 213 
 
 process of taking it, to any form of produc- 
 tive industry. 
 
 We have been much misled as to warfare 
 by our androcentric literature. With a his- 
 tory which recorded nothing else; a litera- 
 ture which praised and an art which exalted 
 it; a religion which called its central power 
 "the God of Battles"— never the God of 
 Workshops, mind you! — with a whole com- 
 plex social structure man-prejudiced from 
 center to circumference, and giving highest 
 praise and honor to the Soldier; it is still 
 hard for us to see what warfare really is in 
 human life. 
 
 Some day we shall have new histories writ- 
 ten, histories of world progress, showing the 
 slow uprising, the development, the interser- 
 vice of the nations; showing the faint beau- 
 tiful dawn of the larger spirit of world-con- 
 sciousness, and all its benefiting growth. 
 
 We shall see people softening, learning, 
 rising; see life lengthen with the possession 
 of herds, and widen in rich prosperity with 
 agriculture. Then industry, blossoming, 
 fruiting, spreading wide; art, giving light 
 and joy; the intellect developing with com- 
 
214 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 panionship and human intercourse ; the whole 
 spreading tree of social progress, the trunk 
 of which is specialized industry, and the 
 branches of which comprise every least and 
 greatest line of human activity and enjoy- 
 ment. This growing tree, springing up 
 wherever conditions of peace and prosperity 
 gave it a chance, we shall see continually 
 hewed down to the very root by war. 
 
 To the later historian will appear through- 
 out the ages, like some Hideous Fate, some 
 Curse, some predetermined check, to drag 
 down all our hope and joy and set life for- 
 ever at its first steps over again, this Red 
 Plague of War. 
 
 The instinct of combat, between males, 
 worked advantageously so long as it did not 
 injure the female or the young. It is a per- 
 fectly natural instinct, and therefore per- 
 fectly right, in its place; but its place is in a 
 pre-patriarchal era. So long as the animal 
 mother was free and competent to care for 
 herself and her young; then it was an advan- 
 tage to have "the best man win;" that is the 
 best stag or lion ; and to have the vanquished 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 215 
 
 die, or live in sulky celibacy, was no disad- 
 vantage to any one but himself. 
 
 Humanity is on a stage above this plan. 
 The best man in the social structure is not 
 always the huskiest. When a fresh horde 
 of ultra-male savages swarmed down upon 
 a prosperous young civilization, killed off 
 the more civilized males and appropriated 
 the more civilized females; they did, no 
 doubt, bring in a fresh physical impetus to 
 the race; but they destroyed the civilization. 
 
 The reproduction of perfectly good sav- 
 ages is not the main business of human- 
 ity. Its business is to grow, socially; to de- 
 velop, to improve; and warfare, at its best, 
 retards human progress; at its worst, ob- 
 literates it. 
 
 Combat is not a social process at all; it is 
 a physical process, a subsidiary sex process, 
 purely masculine, intended to improve the 
 species by the elimination of the unfit. 
 Amusingly enough, or absurdly enough; 
 when applied to society, it eliminates the fit, 
 and leaves the unfit to perpetuate the race! 
 
 We require, to do our organized fighting, 
 a picked lot of vigorous young males, the 
 
216 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 fittest we can find. The too old or too 
 young; the sick, crippled, defective; are all 
 left behind, to marry and be fathers; while 
 the pick of the country, physically, is sent 
 off to oppose the pick of another country, 
 and kill— kill— kill! 
 
 Observe the result on the population ! In 
 the first place the balance is broken — there 
 are not enough men to go around, at home; 
 many women are left unmated. In primi- 
 tive warfare, where women were promptly 
 enslaved, or, at the best, polygamously mar- 
 ried, this did not greatly matter — to the 
 population; but as civilization advances and 
 monogamy obtains, whatever eugenic bene- 
 fits may once have sprung from warfare are 
 completely lost, and all its injuries remain. 
 
 In what we innocently call "civilized war- 
 fare" (we might as well speak of "civilized 
 cannibalism!") , this steady elimination of the 
 fit leaves an ever lowering standard of par- 
 entage at home. It makes a widening mar- 
 gin of what we call "surplus women," mean- 
 ing more than enough to be monogamously 
 married; and these women, not being eco- 
 nomically independent, drag steadily upon 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 217 
 
 the remaining men, postponing marriage, 
 and increasing its burdens. 
 
 The birth rate is lowered in quantity by 
 the lack of husbands, and lowered in quality 
 both by the destruction of superior stock, 
 and by the wide dissemination of those dis- 
 eases which invariably accompany the wife- 
 lessness of the segregated males who are told 
 off to perform our military functions. 
 
 The external horrors and wastes of war- 
 fare we are all familiar with: A. It arrests 
 industry and all progress. B. It destroys the 
 fruits of industry and progress. C. It weak- 
 ens, hurts and kills the combatants. D. It 
 lowers the standard of the non-combatants. 
 Even the conquering nation is heavily in- 
 jured; the conquered sometimes extermi- 
 nated, or at least absorbed by the victor. 
 
 This masculine selective process, when ap- 
 plied to nations, does not produce the same 
 result as when applied to single opposing 
 animals. When little Greece was overcome 
 it did not prove that the victors were su- 
 perior, nor promote human interests in any 
 way; it injured them. 
 
 The "stern arbitrament of war" may 
 
218 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 prove which of two peoples is the better 
 fighter, but it does not prove it therefore the 
 fittest to survive. 
 
 Beyond all these more or less obvious 
 evils, comes a further result, not enough 
 recognized; the psychic effects of military 
 standard of thought and feeling. 
 
 Remember that an androcentric culture 
 has always exempted its own essential ac- 
 tivities from the restraints of ethics, — "All's 
 fair in love and war!" Deceit, trickery, ly- 
 ing, every kind of skulking underhand effort 
 to get information; ceaseless endeavor to 
 outwit and overcome "the enemy"; these, 
 with cruelty and destruction are character- 
 istic of the military process; as well as the 
 much prized virtues of courage, endurance 
 and loyalty, personal and public. 
 
 Also classed as a virtue, and unquestion- 
 ably such from the military point of view, 
 is that prime factor in making and keeping 
 an army, obedience. 
 
 See how the effect of this artificial main- 
 tenance of early mental attitudes acts on 
 later development. True human progress 
 requires elements quite other than these. If 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 219 
 
 successful warfare made one nation unques- 
 tioned master of the earth, its social progress 
 would not be promoted by that event. The 
 rude hordes of Genghis Khan swarmed over 
 Asia and into Europe, but remained rude 
 hordes; conquest is not civilization, nor any 
 part of it. 
 
 When the northern tribes-men over- 
 whelmed the Roman culture they paralyzed 
 progress for a thousand years or so ; set back 
 the clock by that much. So long as all 
 Europe was at war, so long the arts and 
 sciences sat still, or struggled in hid corners 
 to keep their light alive. 
 
 When warfare itself ceases, the physical, 
 social and psychic results do not cease. Our 
 whole culture is still hag-ridden by military 
 ideals. 
 
 Peace congresses have begun to meet, 
 peace societies write and talk, but the monu- 
 ments to soldiers and sailors (naval sailors 
 of course), still go up, and the tin soldier 
 remains a popular toy. We do not see 
 boxes of tin carpenters by any chance; tin 
 farmers, weavers, shoemakers; we do not 
 write our "boys' books" about the real bene- 
 
220 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 factors and servers of society; the adven- 
 turer and destroyer remains the idol of an 
 androcentric culture. 
 
 In politics the military ideal, the military 
 processes, are so predominant as to almost 
 monopolize "that part of ethics." 
 
 The science of government, the plain 
 wholesome business of managing a com- 
 munity for its own good ; doing its work, ad- 
 vancing its prosperity, improving its morals 
 — this is frankly understood and accepted 
 as A Fight from start to finish. Marshall 
 your forces and try to get in, this is the 
 political campaign. When you are in, fight 
 to stay in, and to keep the other fellow out. 
 Fight for your own hand, like an animal; 
 fight for your master like any hired bravo; 
 fight always for some desired "victory" — 
 and "to the victors belong the spoils." 
 
 This is not by any means the true nature 
 of politics. It is not even a fair picture of 
 politics to-day; in which man, the human 
 being, is doing noble work for humanity; 
 but it is the effect of man, the male, on 
 politics. 
 
 Life, to the "male mind" (we have heard 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 221 
 
 enough of the "female mind" to use the 
 analogue!) is a fight, and his ancient mili- 
 tary institutions and processes keep up the 
 delusion. 
 
 As a matter of fact life is growth. 
 Growth comes naturally, by multiplication 
 of cells, and requires three factors to pro- 
 mote it; nourishment, use, rest. Combat is 
 a minor incident of life; belonging to low 
 levels, and not of a developing influence 
 socially. 
 
 The science of politics, in a civilized com- 
 munity, should have by this time a fine ac- 
 cumulation of simplified knowledge for dif- 
 fusion in public schools; a store of practical 
 experience in how to promote social ad- 
 vancement most rapidly, a progressive econ- 
 omy and ease of administration, a simplicity 
 in theory and visible benefit in practice, such 
 as should make every child an eager and 
 serviceable citizen. 
 
 What do we find, here in America, in the 
 field of "poUtics?" 
 
 We find first a party system which is the 
 technical arrangement to carry on a fight. 
 It is perfectly conceivable that a flourishing 
 
222 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 democratic government be carried on with- 
 out any parties at all; public functionaries 
 being elected on their merits, and each pro- 
 posed measure judged on its merits; though 
 this sounds impossible to the androcentric 
 mind. 
 
 "There has never been a democracy with- 
 out factions and parties!" is protested. 
 
 There has never been a democracy, so far, 
 — only an androcracy. 
 
 A group composed of males alone, na- 
 turally divides, opposes, fights; even a male 
 church, under the most rigid rule, has its 
 secret undercurrents of antagonism. 
 
 "It is the human heart!'' is again pro- 
 tested. No, not essentially the human heart, 
 but the male heart. This is so well recog- 
 nized by men in general, that, to their minds, 
 in this mingled field of politics and warfare, 
 women have no place. 
 
 In "civilized warfare" they are, it is true, 
 allowed to trail along and practice their 
 feminine function of nursing; but this is 
 no part of war proper, it is rather the be- 
 ginning of the end of war. Sometime it will 
 strike our "funny spot," these strenuous ef- 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 223 
 
 forts to hurt and destroy, and these accom- 
 panying efforts to heal and save. 
 
 But in our politics there is not even pro- 
 vision for a nursing corps; women are abso- 
 lutely excluded. 
 
 "They cannot play the game!" cries the 
 practical politician. There is loud talk of 
 the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its re- 
 sultant darkening of fair reputations, the 
 total unfitness of lovely woman to take part 
 in "the rough and tumble of politics." 
 
 In other words men have made a human 
 institution into an ultra-masculine perform- 
 ance; and, quite rightly, feel that women 
 could not take part in politics as men do. 
 That it is not necessary to fulfill this human 
 custom in so masculine a way does not occur 
 to them. Few men can overlook the limi- 
 tations of their sex and see the truth; that 
 this business of taking care of our common 
 affairs is not only equally open to women 
 and men, but that women are distinctly 
 needed in it. 
 
 Anyone will admit that a government 
 wholly in the hands of women would be 
 helped by the assistance of men; that a 
 
224 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 gynaecocracy must, of its own nature, be 
 one-sided. Yet it is hard to win reluctant 
 admission of the opposite fact; that an an- 
 drocracy must of its own nature be one- 
 sided also, and would be greatly improved 
 by the participation of the other sex. 
 
 The inextricable confusion of politics and 
 warfare is part of the stumbling block in 
 the minds of men. As they see it, a nation 
 is primarily a fighting organization; and its 
 principal business is offensive and defensive 
 warfare ; therefore the ultimatum with which 
 they oppose the demand for political equal- 
 ity — "women cannot fight, therefore they 
 cannot vote." 
 
 Fighting, when all is said, is to them the 
 real business of life; not to be able to fight 
 is to be quite out of the running; and ability 
 to solve our growing mass of public 
 problems; questions of health, of education, 
 of morals, of economics; weighs naught 
 against the ability to kill. 
 
 This naive assumption of supreme value 
 in a process never of the first importance; 
 and increasingly injurious as society pro- 
 gresses, would be laughable if it were not 
 
POLITICS AND WARFARE 225 
 
 for its evil effects. It acts and reacts upon 
 us to our hurt. Positively, we see the ill 
 effects already touched on ; the evils not only 
 of active war; but of the spirit and methods 
 of war; idealized, inculcated and practiced 
 in other social processes. It tends to make 
 each man-managed nation an actual or po- 
 tential fighting organization, and to give us, 
 instead of civilized peace, that "balance of 
 power" which is like the counted time in the 
 prize ring — only a rest between combats. 
 
 It leaves the weaker nations to be con- 
 quered" and "annexed" just as they used 
 to be; with "preferential tariffs" instead of 
 tribute. It forces upon each the burden of 
 armament; upon many the dreaded con- 
 scription ; and continually lowers the world's 
 resources in money and in life. 
 
 Similarly in politics, it adds to the legiti- 
 mate expenses of governing the illegitimate 
 expenses of fighting ; and must needs have a 
 "spoils system" by which to pay its mer- 
 cenaries. 
 
 In carrying out the public policies the 
 wheels of state are continually clogged by 
 the "opposition"; always an opposition on 
 
226 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 one side or the other ; and this slow wiggling 
 uneven progress, through shorn victories 
 and haggling concessions, is held to be the 
 proper and only political method. 
 
 "Women do not understand politics," we 
 are told; "Women do not care for politics;" 
 "Woman are unfitted for politics." 
 
 It is frankly inconceivable, from the an- 
 drocentric view-point, that nations can live 
 in peace together, and be friendly and ser- 
 viceable as persons are. It is inconceivable 
 also, that, in the management of a nation, 
 honesty, efficiency, wisdom, experience and 
 love could work out good results without 
 any element of combat. 
 
 The "ultimate resort" is still to arms. 
 "The will of the majority" is only respected 
 on account of the guns of the majority. We 
 have but a partial civilization, heavily modi- 
 fied to sex — the male sex. 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 227 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 
 
 THE forest of Truth, on the subject 
 of industry and economics, is dif- 
 ficult to see on account of the trees. 
 We have so many Facts on this subject; 
 so many Opinions; so many Traditions and 
 Habits; and the pressure of Immediate Con- 
 ditions is so intense upon us all; that it is 
 not easy to form a clear space in one's mind 
 and consider the field fairly. 
 
 Possibly the present treatment of the sub- 
 ject will appeal most to the minds of those 
 who know least about it; such as the Aver- 
 age Woman. To her, industry is a day- 
 long and lifelong duty, as well as a natural 
 impulse; and economics means going with- 
 out things. To such untrained but also un- 
 
228 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 prejudiced minds it should be easy to show 
 the main facts on these lines. 
 
 Let us dispose of Economics first, as hav- 
 ing a solemn scientific appearance. 
 
 Physical Economics treats of the internal 
 affairs of the body ; the whole machinery and 
 how it works; all organs, members, func- 
 tions; each last and littlest capillary and 
 leucocyte, are parts of that "economy." 
 
 Nature's "economy" is not in the least 
 "economical." The waste of life, the waste 
 of material, the waste of time and effort, 
 are prodigious, yet she achieves her end as 
 we see. 
 
 Domestic Economics covers the whole 
 care and government of the household; the 
 maintenance of peace, health, order, and 
 morality; the care and nourishment of chil- 
 dren as far as done at home ; the entire man- 
 agement of the home, as well as the spending 
 and saving of money; are included in it. 
 Saving is the least and poorest part of it; 
 especially as in mere abstinence from needed 
 things; most especially when this abstinence 
 is mainly "Mother's." How best to spend! 
 time, strength, love, care, labor, knowledge, 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 229 
 
 and money — this should be the main study 
 in Domestic Economics. 
 
 Social, or, as they are used to call it, 
 Political Economics, covers a larger, but not 
 essentially different field. A family consists 
 of people, and the Mother is their natural 
 manager. Society consists of people — the 
 same people — only more of them. All the 
 people who are members of Society are also 
 members of families — except some incu- 
 bated orphans maybe. Social Economics 
 covers the whole care and management of 
 the people, the maintenance of peace and 
 health and order and morality; the care of 
 children, as far as done out of the home; as 
 well as the spending and saving of the public 
 money — all these are included in it. 
 
 This great business of Social Economics 
 is at present little understood and most 
 poorly managed, for this reason; we ap- 
 proach it from an individual point of view; 
 seeking not so much to do our share in the 
 common service, as to get our personal profit 
 from the common wealth. Where the whole 
 family labors together to harvest fruit and 
 store it for the winter, we have legitimate 
 
230 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 Domestic Economics: but where one mem- 
 ber takes and hides a lot for himself, to the 
 exclusion of the others, we have no Domestic 
 Economics at all — merely individual selfish- 
 ness. 
 
 In Social Economics we have a large, but 
 simple problem. Here is the earth, our 
 farm. Here are the people, who own the 
 earth. How can the most advantage to the 
 most people be obtained from the earth with 
 the least labor? That is the problem of 
 Social Economics. 
 
 Looking at the world as if you held it 
 in your hands to study and discuss, what do 
 we find at present? 
 
 We find people living too thickly for 
 health and comfort in some places, and too 
 thinly in others; we find most people work- 
 ing too hard and too long at honest labor; 
 some people working with damaging in- 
 tensity at dishonest labor; and a few 
 wretched paupers among the rich and poor, 
 degenerate idlers who do not work at all, 
 the scum and the dregs of Society, 
 work far too hard for what we do get. 
 the comfort out of life we easily could; and 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 231 
 
 work far too hard for what we do get. 
 Moreover, there is no peace, no settled se- 
 curity. No man is sure of his living, no mat- 
 ter how hard he works, a thousand things 
 may occur to deprive him of his job, or his 
 income. In our time there is great excite- 
 ment along this line of study ; and more than 
 one proposition is advanced whereby we 
 may improve most, notably instanced in the 
 world-covering advance of Socialism. 
 
 In our present study the principal fact 
 to be exhibited is the influence of a male cul- 
 ture upon Social Economics and Industry. 
 
 Industry, as a department of Social Eco- 
 nomics, is little understood. Heretofore we 
 have viewed this field from several wholly 
 erroneous positions. From the Hebrew 
 (and wholly androcentric) religious teach- 
 ing, we have regarded labor as a curse. 
 
 Nothing could be more absurdly false. 
 Labor is not merely a means of supporting 
 human life — it is human life. Imagine a 
 race of beings living without labor! They 
 must be the rudest savages. 
 
 Human work consists in specialized in- 
 dustry and the exchange of its products; 
 
232 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 and without it is no civilization. As indus- 
 try develops, civilization develops; peace ex- 
 pands ; wealth increases ; science and art help 
 on the splendid total. Productive industry, 
 and its concomitant of distributive industry 
 cover the major field of human life. 
 
 If our industry was normal, what should 
 we see? 
 
 A world full of healthy, happy people; 
 each busily engaged in what he or she most 
 enjoyed doing. Normal Specialization, like 
 all our voluntary processes, is accompanied 
 by keen pleasure; and any check or inter- 
 ruption to it gives pain and injury. Who- 
 soever works at what he loves is well and 
 happy. Whosoever works at what he does 
 not love is ill and miserable. It is very bad 
 economics to force unwilling industry. That 
 is the weakness of slave labor; and of wage 
 labor also where there is not full industrial 
 education and freedom of choice. 
 
 Under normal conditions we should see 
 well developed, well trained specialists hap- 
 pily engaged in the work they most enjoyed; 
 for reasonable hours (any work, or play 
 either, becomes injurious if done too long) ; 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 233 
 
 and as a consequence the whole output of the 
 world would be vastly improved, not only in 
 quantity but in quality. 
 
 Plain are the melancholy facts of what we 
 do see. Following that pitiful conception 
 of labor as a curse, comes the very old and 
 androcentric habit of despising it as belong- 
 ing to women, and then to slaves. 
 
 As a matter of fact industry is in its ori- 
 gin feminine; that is, maternal. It is the 
 overflowing fountain of mother-love and 
 mother-power which first prompts the hu- 
 man race to labor; and for long ages men 
 performed no productive industry at all ; be- 
 ing merely hunters and fighters. 
 
 It is this lack of natural instinct for labor 
 in the male of our species, together with the 
 ideas and opinions based on that lack, and 
 voiced by him in his many writings, religious 
 and other, which have given to the world its 
 false estimate of this great function, human 
 work. That which is our very life, our 
 greatest joy, our road to all advancement, 
 we have scorned and oppressed; so that 
 "working people," the "working classes," 
 
234 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 "having to work," etc., are to this day 
 spoken of with contempt. Perhaps drones 
 speak so among themselves of the "working 
 bees!" 
 
 Normally, widening out from the moth- 
 er's careful and generous service in the fam- 
 ily, to careful, generous service in the world, 
 we should find labor freely given, with love 
 and pride. 
 
 Abnormally, crushed under the burden of 
 androcentric scorn and prejudice, we have 
 labor grudgingly produced under pressure 
 of necessity ; labor of slaves under fear of the 
 whip, or of wage-slaves, one step higher, un- 
 der fear of want. Long ages wherein hunt- 
 ing and righting were the only manly occu- 
 pations, have left their heavy impress. The 
 predacious instinct and the combative in- 
 stinct weigh down and disfigure our eco- 
 nomic development. What Veblen calls 
 "the instinct of workmanship" grows on, 
 slowly and irresistibly; but the malign fea- 
 tures of our industrial life are distinctly an- 
 drocentric: the desire to get, of the hunter; 
 interfering with the desire to give, of the 
 mother ; the desire to overcome an antagonist 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 235 
 
 — originally masculine, interfering with the 
 desire to serve and benefit — originally femi- 
 nine. 
 
 Let the reader keep in mind that as hu- 
 man beings, men are able to over-live their 
 masculine natures and do noble service to 
 the world; also that as human beings they 
 are to-day far more highly developed than 
 women, and doing far more for the world. 
 The point here brought out is that as males 
 their unchecked supremacy has resulted in 
 an abnormal predominance of masculine im- 
 pulses in our human processes ; and that this 
 predominance has been largely injurious. 
 
 As it happens, the distinctly feminine or 
 maternal impulses are far more nearly in 
 line with human progress than are those of 
 the male; which makes her exclusion from 
 human functions the more mischievous. 
 
 Our current teachings in the infant sci- 
 ence of Political Economy are naively mas- 
 culine. They assume as unquestionable that 
 "the economic man" will never do anything 
 unless he has to; will only do it to escape 
 pain or attain pleasure ; and will, inevitably, 
 take all he can get, and do all he can to out- 
 
236 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 wit, overcome, and if necessary destroy his 
 antagonist. 
 
 Always the antagonist; to the male mind 
 an antagonist is essential to progress, to all 
 achievement. He has planted that root- 
 thought in all the human world; from that 
 old hideous idea of Satan, "The Adversary," 
 down to the competitor in business, or the 
 boy at the head of the class, to be superseded 
 by another. 
 
 Therefore, even in science, "the struggle 
 for existence" is the dominant law — to the 
 male mind, with the "survival of the fittest" 
 and "the elimination of the unfit." 
 
 Therefore in industry and economics we 
 find always and everywhere the antagonist; 
 the necessity for somebody or something to 
 be overcome — else why make an effort? If 
 you have not the incentive of reward, or the 
 incentive of combat, why work? "Competi- 
 tion is the life of trade." 
 
 Thus the Economic Man. 
 
 But how about the Economic Woman? 
 
 To the androcentric mind she does not 
 ex i s t — women are females, and that's all; 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 237 
 
 their working abilities are limited to per- 
 sonal service. 
 
 That it would be possible to develop in- 
 dustry to far greater heights, and to find in 
 social economics a simple and beneficial 
 process for the promotion of human life and 
 prosperity, under any other impulse than 
 these two, Desire and Combat, is hard in- 
 deed to recognize — for the "male mind." 
 
 So absolutely interwoven are our existing 
 concepts of maleness and humanness, so sure 
 are we that men are people and women only 
 females, that the claim of equal weight and 
 dignity in human affairs of the feminine in- 
 stincts and methods is scouted as absurd. 
 We find existing industry almost wholly in 
 male hands; find it done as men do it; as- 
 sume that that is the way it must be done. 
 
 When women suggest that it could be 
 done differently, their proposal is waved 
 aside — they are "only women" — their ideas 
 are "womanish." 
 
 Agreed. So are men "only men," their 
 ideas are "mannish"; and of the two the 
 women are more vitally human than the 
 men, by nature. 
 
238 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 The female is the race-type — the man the 
 variant. 
 
 The female, as a race-type, having the 
 female processes besides, best performs the 
 race processes. The male, however, has with 
 great difficulty developed them, always 
 heavily handicapped by his maleness; being 
 in origin essentially a creature of sex, and so 
 dominated almost exclusively by sex im- 
 pulses. 
 
 The human instinct of mutual sendee is 
 checked by the masculine instinct of com- 
 bat; the human tendency to specialize in la- 
 bor, to rejoicingly pour force in lines of spe- 
 cialized expression, is checked by the pre- 
 dacious instinct, which will exert itself for 
 reward; and disfigured by the masculine in- 
 stinct of self-expression, which is an entirely 
 different thing from the great human out- 
 pouring of world force. 
 
 Great men, the world's teachers and lead- 
 ers, are great in humanness; mere maleness 
 does not make for greatness unless it be in 
 warfare — a disadvantageous glory! Great 
 women also must be great in humanness ; but 
 their female instincts are not so subversive 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 239 
 
 of human progress as are the instincts of the 
 male. To be a teacher and leader, to love 
 and serve, to guard and guide and help, are 
 well in line with motherhood. 
 
 "Are they not also in line with father- 
 hood?" will be asked; and, "Are not the 
 father's paternal instincts masculine?" 
 
 No, they are not; they differ in no way 
 from the maternal, in so far as they are 
 beneficial. Parental functions of the higher 
 sort, of the human sort, are identical. The 
 father can give his children many advan- 
 tages which the mother can not; but that is 
 due to his superiority as a human being. He 
 possesses far more knowledge and power in 
 the world, the human world; he himself is 
 more developed in human powers and 
 processes; and is therefore able to do much 
 for his children which the mother can not; 
 but this is in no way due to his masculinity. 
 It is in this development of human powers 
 in man, through fatherhood, that we may 
 read the explanation of our short period of 
 androcentric culture. 
 
 So thorough and complete a reversal of 
 previous relation, such continuance of what 
 
240 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 appears in every way an unnatural position, 
 must have had some justification in racial 
 advantages, or it could not have endured. 
 This is its justification; the establishment of 
 humanness in the male; he being led into it, 
 along natural lines, by the exercise of pre- 
 viously existing desires. 
 
 In a male culture the attracting forces 
 must inevitably have been, we have seen, De- 
 sire and Combat. These masculine forces, 
 acting upon human processes, while neces- 
 sary to the uplifting of the man, have been 
 anything but uplifting to civilization. A 
 sex which thinks, feels and acts in terms of 
 combat is difficult to harmonize in the smooth 
 bonds of human relationship; that they have 
 succeeded so well is a beautiful testimony to 
 the superior power of race tendency over 
 sex tendency. Uniting and organizing, 
 crudely and temporarily, for the common 
 hunt ; and then, with progressive elaboration, 
 for the common fight; they are now using 
 the same tactics — and the same desires, un- 
 fortunately — in common work. 
 
 Union, organization, complex inter- 
 service, are the essential processes of a grow- 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 241 
 
 ing society; in them, in the ever-increasing 
 discharge of power along widening lines of 
 action, is the joy and health of social life. 
 But so far men combine in order to better 
 combat; the mutual service held incidental 
 to the common end of conquest and plunder. 
 
 In spite of this the overmastering power 
 of humanness is now developing among 
 modern men immense organizations of a 
 wholly beneficial character, with no purpose 
 but mutual advantage. This is true human 
 growth, and as such will inevitably take the 
 place of the sex-prejudiced earlier processes. 
 
 The human character of the Christian re- 
 ligion is now being more and more insisted 
 on ; the practical love and service of each and 
 all ; in place of the old insistence on Desire — 
 for a Crown and Harp in Heaven, and Com- 
 bat — with that everlasting Adversary. 
 
 In economics this great change is rapidly 
 going on before our eyes. It is a change in 
 idea, in basic concept, in our theory of what 
 the whole thing is about. We are beginning 
 to see the world, not as "a fair field and no 
 favor" — not a place for one man to get 
 ahead of others, for a price ; but as an estab- 
 
242 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 lishment belonging to us, the proceeds of 
 which are to be applied, as a matter of 
 course, to human advantage. 
 
 In the old idea, the wholly masculine idea, 
 based on the processes of sex-combat, the 
 advantage of the world lay in having "the 
 best man win." Some, in the first steps of 
 enthusiasm for Eugenics, think so still; 
 imagining that the primal process of pro- 
 moting evolution through the paternity of 
 the conquering male is the best process. 
 
 To have one superior lion kill six or sixty 
 inferior lions, and leave a progeny of more 
 superior lions behind him, is all right — for 
 lions; the superiority in fighting being all 
 the superiority they need. 
 
 But the man able to outwit his fellows, to 
 destroy them in physical, or ruin in finan- 
 cial, combat, is not, therefore, a superior hu- 
 man creature. Even physical superiority, as 
 a fighter, does not prove the kind of vigor 
 best calculated to resist disease, or to adapt 
 itself to changing conditions. 
 
 That our masculine culture in its effect on 
 Economics and Industry is injurious, is 
 clearly shown by the whole open page of 
 
INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 243 
 
 history. From the simple beneficent activ- 
 ities of a matriarchal period we follow the 
 same lamentable steps; nation after nation. 
 Women are enslaved and captives are en- 
 slaved; a military despotism is developed; 
 labor is despised and discouraged. Then 
 when the irresistible social forces do bring 
 us onward, in science, art, commerce, and 
 all that we call civilization, we find the same 
 check acting always upon that progress ; and 
 the really vital social processes of produc- 
 tion and distribution, heavily injured by the 
 financial combat and carnage which rages 
 ever over and among them. 
 
 The real development of the people, the 
 forming of finer physiques, finer minds, a 
 higher level of efficiency, a broader range of 
 enjoyment and accomplishment — is hin- 
 dered and not helped by this artificially 
 maintained "struggle for existence," this 
 constant endeavor to eliminate what, from a 
 masculine standard, is "unfit." 
 
 That we have progressed thus far, that we 
 are now moving forward so rapidly, is in 
 spite of and not because of our androcentric 
 culture. 
 
244 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A HUMAN WORLD 
 
 IN the change from the dominance of one 
 sex to the equal power of two, to what 
 may we look forward? What effect 
 upon civilization is to be expected from the 
 equality of womanhood in the human race? 
 
 To put the most natural question first — 
 what will men lose by it? Many men are 
 genuinely concerned about this; fearing 
 some new position of subservience and dis- 
 respect. Others laugh at the very idea of 
 change in their position, relying as always 
 on the heavier fist. So long as fighting was 
 the determining process, the best fighter 
 must needs win; but in the rearrangement 
 of processes which marks our age, superior 
 physical strength does not make the poorer 
 wealthy, nor even the soldier a general. 
 
 The major processes of life to-day are 
 quite within the powers of women; women 
 
A HUMAN WORLD 245 
 
 are fulfilling their new relations more and 
 more successfully; gathering new strength, 
 new knowledge, new ideals. The change is 
 upon us; what will it do to men? 
 
 No harm. 
 
 As we are a monogamous race, there will 
 be no such drastic and cruel selection among 
 competing males as would eliminate the vast 
 majority as unfit. Even though some be 
 considered unfit for fatherhood, all human 
 life remains open to them. Perhaps the 
 most important feature of this change comes 
 in right here ; along this old line of sex-selec- 
 tion, replacing that power in the right 
 hands, and using it for the good of the race. 
 
 The woman, free at last, intelligent, 
 recognizing her real place and responsibil- 
 ity in life as a human being, will be not less, 
 but more, efficient as a mother. She will 
 understand that, in the line of physical evo- 
 lution, motherhood is the highest process; 
 and that her work, as a contribution to an 
 improved race, must always involve this 
 great function. She will see that right par- 
 entage is the purpose of the whole scheme 
 of sex-relationship, and act accordingly. 
 
246 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 In our time, his human faculties being 
 sufficiently developed, civilized man can 
 look over and around his sex limitations, and 
 begin to see what are the true purposes and 
 methods of human life. 
 
 He is now beginning to learn that his 
 own governing necessity of Desire is not 
 the governing necessity of parentage, but 
 only a contributory tendency; and that, 
 in the interests of better parentage, 
 motherhood is the dominant factor, and 
 must be so considered. 
 
 In slow reluctant admission of this fact, 
 man heretofore has recognized one class of 
 women as mothers; and has granted them 
 a varying amount of consideration as such; 
 but he has none the less insisted on main- 
 taining another class of women, forbidden 
 motherhood, and merely subservient to his 
 desires; a barren, mischievous unnatural re- 
 lation, wholly aside from parental purposes, 
 and absolutely injurious to society. This 
 whole field of morbid action will be elim- 
 inated from human life by the normal de- 
 velopment of women. 
 
 It is not a question of interfering with or 
 
A HUMAN WORLD 247 
 
 punishing men; still less of interfering with 
 or punishing women ; but purely a matter of 
 changed education and opportunity for 
 every child. 
 
 Each and all shall be taught the real na- 
 ture and purpose of motherhood; the real 
 nature and purpose of manhood; what each 
 is for, and which is the more important. A 
 new sense of the power and pride of woman- 
 hood will waken; a womanhood no longer 
 sunk in helpless dependence upon men; no 
 longer limited to mere unpaid house-service ; 
 no longer blinded by the false morality 
 which subjects even motherhood to man's 
 dominance; but a womanhood which will 
 recognize its pre-eminent responsibility to 
 the human race, and live up to it. Then, 
 with all normal and right competition among 
 men for the favor of women, those best 
 fitted for fatherhood will be chosen. Those 
 who are not chosen will live single — per- 
 force. 
 
 Many, under the old mistaken notion of 
 what used to be called the "social necessity" 
 of prostitution, will protest at the idea of its 
 extinction. 
 
248 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 "It is necessary to have it," they will say. 
 
 "Necessary to whom?" 
 
 Not to the women hideously sacrificed to 
 it, surely. 
 
 Not to society, honey-combed with dis- 
 eases due to this cause. 
 
 Not to the family, weakened and impov- 
 erished by it. 
 
 To whom then? To the men who want it ? 
 
 But it is not good for them, it promotes 
 all manner of disease, of vice, of crime. It 
 is absolutely and unquestionably a "social 
 evil." 
 
 An intelligent and powerful womanhood 
 will put an end to this indulgence of one 
 sex at the expense of the other and to the 
 injury of both. 
 
 In this inevitable change will lie what 
 some men will consider a loss. But only 
 those of the present generation. For the 
 sons of the women now entering upon this 
 new era of world life will be differently 
 reared. They will recognize the true rela- 
 tion of men to the primal process; and be 
 amazed that for so long the greater values 
 have been lost sight of in favor of the less. 
 
A HUMAN WORLD 249 
 
 This one change will do more to promote 
 the physical health and beauty of the race; 
 to improve the quality of children born, and 
 the general vigor and purity of social life, 
 than any one measure which could be pro- 
 posed. It rests upon a recognition of moth- 
 erhood as the real base and cause of the 
 family ; and dismisses to the limbo of all out- 
 worn superstition that false Hebraic and 
 grossly androcentric doctrine that the 
 woman is to be subject to the man, and that 
 he shall rule over her. He has tried this 
 arrangement long enough — to the grievous 
 injury of the world. A higher standard of 
 happiness will result; equality and mutual 
 respect between parents; pure love, unde- 
 nted by self-interests on either side; and a 
 new respect for Childhood. 
 
 With the Child, seen at last to be the gov- 
 erning purpose of this relation, with all the 
 best energies of men and women bent on 
 raising the standard of life for all children, 
 we shall have a new status of family life 
 which will be clean and noble, and satisfying 
 to all its members. 
 
 The change in all the varied lines of hu- 
 
250 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 man work is beyond the powers of any pres- 
 ent day prophet to forecast with precision. 
 A new grade of womanhood we can clearly 
 foresee; proud, strong, serene, independent; 
 great mothers of great women and great 
 men. These will hold high standards and 
 draw men up to them; by no compulsion 
 save nature's law of attraction. A clean 
 and healthful world, enjoying the taste of 
 life as it never has since racial babyhood, 
 with homes of quiet and content — this we 
 can foresee. 
 
 Art, in the extreme sense, will perhaps 
 always belong most to men. It would seem 
 as if that ceaseless urge to expression, was, 
 at least originally, most congenial to the 
 male. But applied art, in every form, and 
 art used directly for transmission of ideas, 
 such as literature, or oratory, appeals to 
 women as much, if not more, than to men. 
 
 We can make no safe assumption as to 
 what, if any, distinction there will be in the 
 free human work of men and women, until 
 we have seen generation after generation 
 grow up under absolutely equal conditions. 
 In all our games and sports and minor so- 
 
A HUMAN WORLD 251 
 
 cial customs, such changes will occur as must 
 needs follow upon the rising dignity allotted 
 to the woman's temperament, the woman's 
 point of view; not in the least denying to 
 men the fullest exercise of their special pow- 
 ers and preferences; but classifying these 
 newly, as not human — merely male. At 
 present we have pages or columns in our 
 papers, marked as "The Woman's Page," 
 "Of Interest to Women," and similar de- 
 limiting titles. Similarly we might have dis- 
 tinctly masculine matters so marked and 
 specified; not assumed as now to be of gen- 
 eral human interest. 
 
 The effect of the change upon Ethics and 
 Religion is deep and wide. With the en- 
 trance of women upon full human life, a 
 new principle comes into prominence; the 
 principle of loving service. That this is the 
 governing principle of Christianity is be- 
 lieved by many; but an androcentric inter- 
 pretation has quite overlooked it ; and made, 
 as we have shown, the essential dogma of 
 their faith the desire of an enternal reward 
 and the combat with an eternal enemy. 
 
 The feminine attitude in life is wholly 
 
252 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 different. As a female she has merely to 
 be herself and passively attract; neither to 
 compete nor to pursue; as a mother her 
 whole process is one of growth; first the de- 
 velopment of the live child within her, and 
 the wonderful nourishment from her own 
 body; and then all the later cultivation to 
 make the child grow; all the watching, 
 teaching, guarding, feeding. In none of 
 this is there either desire, combat, or self- 
 expression. The feminine attitude, as ex- 
 pressed in religion, makes of it a patient 
 practical fulfillment of law; a process of 
 large sure improvements; a limitless com- 
 forting love and care. 
 
 This full assurance of love and of power; 
 this endless cheerful service; the broad pro- 
 vision for all people; rather than the com- 
 petitive selection of a few "victors;" is the 
 natural presentation of religious truth from 
 the woman's viewpoint. Her governing 
 principle being growth and not combat; her 
 main tendency being to give and not to get ; 
 she more easily and naturally lives and 
 teaches these religious principles. It is for 
 this reason that the broader, gentler teach- 
 
A HUMAN WORLD 253 
 
 ins" of the Unitarian and Universalist sects 
 have appealed so especially to women, and 
 that so many women preach in their 
 churches. 
 
 This principle of growth, as applied and 
 used in general human life, will work to far 
 other ends than those now so painfully vis- 
 ible. 
 
 In education, for instance, with neither 
 reward nor punishment as spur or bait; with 
 no competition to rouse effort and animos- 
 ity, but rather with the feeling of a gardener 
 towards his plants; the teacher will teach 
 and the children learn, in mutual ease and 
 happiness. The law of passive attraction 
 applies here, leading to such ingenuity in 
 presentation as shall arouse the child's in- 
 terest; and, in the true spirit of promoting 
 growth, each child will have his best and 
 fullest training, without regard to who is 
 "ahead" of him, or her, or who "behind." 
 
 We do not sadly measure the cabbage- 
 stalk by the corn-stalk, and praise the corn 
 for getting ahead of the cabbage — nor in- 
 cite the cabbage to emulate the corn. We 
 
254 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 nourish each, to its best growth — and are 
 the richer. 
 
 That every child on earth shall have right 
 conditions to make the best growth possible 
 to it; that every citizen, from birth to death, 
 shall have a chance to learn all he or she 
 can assimilate, to develop every power that 
 is in them — for the common good; — this will 
 be the aim of education, under human man- 
 agement. 
 
 In the world of "society" we may look 
 for very radical changes. 
 
 With all women full human beings, 
 trained and useful in some form of work, 
 the class of busy idlers who run about for- 
 ever "entertaining" and being "entertained" 
 will disappear as utterly as will the prosti- 
 tute. No woman with real work to do could 
 have the time for such petty amusements; 
 or enjoy them if she did have time. No 
 woman with real work to do, work she loved 
 and was well fitted for, work honored and 
 well-paid, would take up the Unnatural 
 Trade. Genuine relaxation and recreation, 
 all manner of healthful sports and pastimes, 
 beloved of both sexes to-day, will remain, 
 
A HUMAN WORLD 255 
 
 of course; but the set structure of "social 
 functions" — so laughably misnamed — will 
 disappear with the "society women" who 
 make it possible. Once active members of 
 real Society, no woman could go back to 
 "society," any more than a roughrider could 
 return to a hobbyhorse. 
 
 New development in dress, wise, comfort- 
 able, beautiful, may be confidently expected, 
 as woman becomes more human. No fully 
 human creature could hold up its head un- 
 der the absurdities our women wear to-day 
 — and have worn for dreary centuries. 
 
 So on through all the aspects of life we 
 may look for changes, rapid and far-reach- 
 ing; but natural and all for good. The im- 
 provement is not due to any inherent moral 
 superiority of women; nor to any moral in- 
 feriority of men; men at present, as more 
 human, are ahead of women in all distinctly 
 human ways; yet their maleness, as we have 
 shown repeatedly, warps and disfigures 
 their humanness. The woman, being by na- 
 ture the race-type, and her feminine func- 
 tions being far more akin to human func- 
 tions than are those essential to the male, 
 
256 THE MAN-MADE WORLD 
 
 will bring into human life a more normal 
 influence. 
 
 Under this more normal influence our 
 present perversities of function will, of 
 course, tend to disappear. The directly ser- 
 viceable tendency of women, as shown in 
 every step of their public work, will have 
 small patience with hoary traditions of ab- 
 surdity. We need but look at long recorded 
 facts to see what women do — or try to do, 
 when they have opportunity. Even in their 
 crippled, smothered past, they have made 
 valiant efforts — not always wise — in charity 
 and philanthropy. 
 
 In our own time this is shown through all 
 the length and breadth of our country, by 
 the Woman's Clubs. Little groups of 
 women, drawing together in human rela- 
 tion, at first, perhaps, with no better pur- 
 pose than to "improve their minds," have 
 grown and spread ; combined and federated ; 
 and in their great reports, representing hun- 
 dreds of thousands of women — we find a 
 splendid record of human work. They 
 strive always to improve something, to take 
 care of something, to help and serve and 
 
A HUMAN WORLD 257 
 
 benefit. In "village improvement," in trav- 
 eling libraries, in lecture courses and ex- 
 hibitions, in promoting good legislation; in 
 many a line of noble effort our Women's 
 Clubs show what women want to do. 
 
 Men do not have to do these things 
 through their clubs, which are mainly for 
 pleasure; they can accomplish what they 
 wish to through regular channels. But the 
 character and direction of the influence of 
 women in human affairs is conclusively es- 
 tablished by the things they already do and 
 try to do. In those countries, and in our 
 own states, where they are already full citi- 
 zens, the legislation introduced and pro- 
 moted by them is of the same beneficent 
 character. The normal woman is a strong 
 creature, loving and serviceable. The kind 
 of woman men are afraid to entrust with 
 political power, selfish, idle, over-sexed, or 
 ignorant and narrow-minded, is not normal, 
 but is the creature of conditions men have 
 made. We need have no fear of her, for 
 she will disappear with the conditions which 
 created her. 
 
 In older days, without knowledge of the 
 
258 THE MAN-MADE WORLD. 
 
 natural sciences, we accepted life as static. 
 If, being born in China, we grew up with 
 foot-bound women, we assumed that women 
 were such, and must so remain. Born in 
 India, we accepted the child-wife, the pitiful 
 child-widow, the ecstatic suttee, as natural 
 expressions of womanhood. In each age, 
 each country, we have assumed life to be 
 necessarily what it was — a moveless fact. 
 
 All this is giving way fast in our new 
 knowledge of the laws of life. We find that 
 Growth is the eternal law, and that even 
 rocks are slowly changing. Human life is 
 seen to be as dynamic as any other form; 
 and the most certain tiling about it is that 
 it will change. In the light of this knowl- 
 edge we need no longer accept the load of 
 what we call "sin;" the grouped misery of 
 poverty, disease and crime; the cumbrous, 
 inefficacious, wasteful processes of life to- 
 day, as needful or permanent. 
 
 We have but to learn the real elements in 
 humanity; its true powers and natural char- 
 acteristics; to see wherein we are hampered 
 by the wrong ideas and inherited habits of 
 earlier generations, and break loose from 
 
A HUMAN WORLD 259 
 
 them — then we can safely and swiftly intro- 
 duce a far nobler grade of living. 
 
 Of all crippling hindrances in false ideas, 
 we have none more universally mischievous 
 than this root error about men and women. 
 Given the old androcentric theory, and we 
 have an androcentric culture — the kind we 
 so far know; this short stretch we call "his- 
 tory;" with its proud and pitiful record. 
 We have done wonders of upward growth — 
 for growth is the main law, and may not be 
 wholly resisted. But we have hindered, per- 
 verted, temporarily checked that growth, 
 age after age; and again and again has a 
 given nation, far advanced and promising, 
 sunk to ruin, and left another to take up 
 its task of social evolution; repeat its errors 
 — and its failure. 
 
 One major cause of the decay of nations 
 is "the social evil" — a thing wholly due to 
 the androcentric culture. Another steady 
 endless check is warfare — due to the same 
 cause. Largest of all is poverty; that 
 spreading disease which grows with our so- 
 cial growth and shows most horribly when 
 and where we are most proud, keeping step, 
 
260 THE MAN-MADE WORLD. 
 
 as it were, with private wealth. This, too, 
 in large measure, is due to the false ideas on 
 industry and economics, based, like the oth- 
 ers mentioned, on a wholly masculine view 
 of life. 
 
 By changing our underlying theory in 
 this matter, we change all the resultant as- 
 sumption; and it is this alteration in our 
 basic theory of life which is being urged. 
 
 The scope and purpose of human life is 
 entirely above and beyond the field of sex 
 relationship. Women are human beings, as 
 much as men, by nature ; and as women, are 
 even more sympathetic with human 
 processes. To develop human life in its 
 true powers we need full equal citizenship 
 for women. 
 
 The great woman's movement and labor 
 movement of to-day are parts of the same 
 pressure, the same world-progress. An 
 economic democracy must rest on a free 
 womanhood; and a free womanhod in- 
 evitably leads to an economic democracy. 
 
BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN 
 
 "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER" 
 
 Worthy of a place beside some of the weird master- 
 pieces of Hawthorne and Poe. — Literature. 
 
 As a short story it stands among the most powerful 
 produced in America. — Chicago News. 
 
 By mail of Charlton Co., $0.50. 
 
 THE FORERUNNER 
 
 A monthly magazine, written, 
 edited, owned and published 
 
 by 
 
 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 
 
 67 Wall Street, New York City 
 U. S. A. 
 
 SUBSCRIPTION PER YEAR 
 
 Domestic $1.00 
 
 (. anadian 1.12 
 
 Foreign 1.25 
 
 Bound Volumes, each year $1.40 post paid 
 Except Volume I which is $1.75 post paid 
 
 This magazine carries Mrs. Gilman's best and newest 
 work, her social philosophy, verse, satire, fiction, ethical 
 teaching, humor and opinion. 
 
 It stands for Humanness in Women and Men ; for 
 better methods in Child Culture ; for the New Ethics, the 
 better Economics — the New World we are to make, are 
 making. The breadth of Mrs. Gilman's thought and her 
 power of expressing it have made her well-known in 
 America and Europe as a leader along lines of human 
 improvement and a champion of woman. 
 
 THE FORERUNNER voices her thought and its 
 messages are not only many, but strong, true and vital. 
 
 CHARLTON COMPANY, 67 Wall St.. New York 
 
BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN 
 
 "WOMEN AND ECONOMICS" 
 
 Since John Stuart Mill's essay there has been no 
 book dealing with the whole position of women to 
 approach it in originality of conception and brilliancy 
 of exposition. — London Chronicle. 
 
 The most significant utterance on the subject since 
 Mill's "Subjection of Women." — The Nation. 
 
 It is the strongest book on the woman question that 
 has yet been published. — Minneapolis Journal. 
 
 A remarkable book. A work on economics that has 
 not a dull page, — the work of a woman about women 
 that has not a flippant word. — Boston Transcript. 
 
 This book unites in a remarkable degree the charm 
 of a brilliantly written essay with the inevitable logic 
 of a proposition of Euclid. Nothing that we have 
 read for many a long day can approach in clearness 
 of conception, in power of arrangement, and in lucidity 
 of expression the argument developed in the first seven 
 chapters of this remarkable book. 
 
 — Westminster Gazette, London. 
 
 Will be widely read and discussed as the cleverest, 
 fairest, most forcible presentation of the view of the 
 rapidly increasing group who look with favor on the 
 extension of industrial employment to women. 
 
 — Political Science Quarterly. 
 
 By mail of Charlton Co., $1.50. 
 
 •'Women and Economics" has been translated into German, 
 Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Russian and Japanese. 
 
 "CONCERNING CHILDREN" 
 
 Wanted : — A philanthropist, to give a copy to every 
 English-speaking parent. — The Times, New York. 
 
 Should be read by every mother in the land. 
 
 — The Press, New York. 
 
 Wholesomely disturbing book that deserves to be 
 read for its own sake. — Chicago Dial. 
 
 By mail of Charlton Co., $1.25. 
 
 "Concerning Children '' has been translated into German, Dutch 
 and Yiddish. 
 
 CHARLTON COMPANY, 67 Wall St., New York 
 
BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN 
 
 "IN THIS OUR WORLD" 
 
 There is a Joyous superabundance of life, of 
 strength, of health, in Mrs. Gilman's verse, which 
 seems born of the glorious sunshine and rich gardens 
 of California. — Washington Times. 
 
 The freshness, charm and geniality of her satire 
 temporarily convert us to her most advanced views. 
 
 — Boston Journal. 
 
 The poet of women and for women, a new and 
 prophetic voice in the world. Montaigne would have 
 rejoiced in her. — Mexican Herald. 
 
 By mail of Charlton Co., $1.25. 
 
 "THE HOME" 
 
 Indeed, Mrs. Gilman has not intended her book so 
 much as a treatise for scholars as a surgical operation 
 on the popular mind. — The Critic, New York. 
 
 Whatever Mrs. Gilman writes, people read — approv- 
 ing or protesting, still they read. 
 
 — Republican, Springfield, Mass. 
 
 Full of thought and of new and striking suggestions. 
 Tells what the average woman has and ought not keep, 
 what she is and ought not be. — Literature World. 
 
 But it is safe to say that no more stimulating arraign- 
 ment has ever before taken shape and that the argument 
 of the book is noble, and, on the whole, convincing. 
 
 — Congregationalist, Boston. 
 
 The name of this author is a guarantee of logical 
 reasoning, sound economical principles and progressive 
 thought. — The Craftsman, Syracuse. 
 
 By mail of Charlton Co., $1.00. 
 
 ■'The Home " has been translated into Swedish. 
 
 CHARLTON COMPANY, 67 Wall St., New York 
 
BOOKS BY 
 
 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 
 
 Moving the Mountain. 
 
 A Utopia at short range. How we might change this 
 country in thirty years, if we changed our minds first. 
 Mrs. Gilman's latest book, like her earliest verse, is a 
 protest against the parrot cry that "you can't alter human 
 nature." 
 
 By mail of Charlton Co $i . 10 
 
 What Diantha Did. 
 
 A Novel. 
 
 "What she did was to solve the domestic service 
 problem for both mistress and maid in a southern Cali- 
 fornia town . " " The Survey. ' ' 
 
 "A sensible book, it gives a new and deserved com- 
 prehension of the importance and complexity of house- 
 keeping." "The Independent." 
 
 "Mrs. Perkins Gilman is as full of ideas as ever, and 
 her Diantha is a model for all young women." t 
 
 "The Englishwoman." 
 
 By mail of Charlton Co $i . 10 
 
 THE CRUX 
 
 This book marks a distinct advance in Mrs. Gilman's 
 power as a writer of fiction. 
 
 It is a smooth, pleasant, natural sort of story, out of 
 which suddenly blazes the new morality, saying: "Beware 
 of a Biological Sin ; for that there is no forgiveness." 
 
 It is a story expressly written for girls, yet there will 
 be many who would by no means allow girls to have such 
 knowledge, though it would save many girls. 
 
 By mail of Charlton Co $i . 10 
 
 Charlton Co., 67 Wall St., New York